A Lit Powder Keg
by Michael JG Meathook
Summary: A gothic-themed action adventure wherein Holmes teams up with other Victorian literary characters, as necessitated by overwhelming forces of malevolence threatening all of London.
1. Chapter 1: Man is Wolf to Man

A wall manifested out from the darkness, scraping a chunk off the carriage as it rounded a corner at high velocity. Animal feces choked up the wheels and sprayed back in spurts. Dr. Watson managed to duck beneath a wooden arch in time to knock only his hat off, mercifully leaving his head intact.

Wherever flits of light appeared down random spats of streets, the steamed breath of their horses would flare with the fiery orange of gaslight as if the beasts were as infernal as the ones partaking in their deadly hunt.

Watson banged a fist against the carriage door. "This doesn't look good," he yelled. "These streets were really not designed for any hoofed thing bigger than a goat. There's no bloody light and these horses are spooked to their brink of death."

A top hatch on the carriage slammed open. Detective Sherlock Holmes popped out to chest level, holding a revolver in each hand.

Handing one to Watson, he issued a prize-winning smug sneer. "Don't worry old chum. We've nearly got this reprobate cornered. The Thames to his south, the maze of the slums to his east, and is closing in on his tail from the west. We're hemming him into quite dire straits."

As Holmes turned his attention to the front of the carriage, a bump into another structure caused a cry from the horses, a horrible shutter throughout their ride, and the detective's own pistol to fly out of his hand.

"I believe you're forgetting a crucial bit of datum from your analysis, old boy," Watson shouted. "We're the ones being chased."

As the carriage plummeted into its longest bout of darkness yet, Holmes guffawed. "No better way for a worm to catch its bait than hang itself upon a hook."

The carriage lurched upwards as it rode over mounds of unseeable detriment. Light blasted their faces from a revealed bonfire.

Two orbs of blistering vibrant orange flying towards them shimmered even brighter than flame. The eyes of a coal-black hound nearly the size of the horses pounced atop the front of their vehicle.

Holmes disappeared down his hatch as the hound's jaws clamped down around where he'd been less than a moment ago.

"Back to whence you came!" Watson shouted, taking aim he fired a round between the two hellfire reflecting portals the hound had in lieu of proper eyes.

One devilish twisted claw stamped forward, the bleeding hound drawing itself closer to the doctor. Watson feared the creature to be beyond concerning itself with such a trite thing as death.

...Until its radiant eyes rolled up into its head, its long and shiny tongue limped out its maw. The large hulking body collapsed atop the carriage before sliding off, lost in the muck.

A wheel struck the giant hounds body. The highly trained ear of the doctor knew the ensuing _CRACK_ to not be the bones of the hound's carcass, but the wooden axle in one of his wheels.

"Hang on for your life," came the muffled yell of Sherlock Holmes. "And tighter still onto that pistol!"

The carriage crashed into the ground, thrusting Watson's ribs into the plank he held in a death grip.

The velocity kept them scraping through the street, but the weight of the carriage caught their horses by their necks.

One horse shrilled, the other gasped what sounded like its last breath, and dropped to the ground.

They plunged into more darkness, turning into an angle that was certain disaster.

Watson felt it before he spotted it. They were skidding uncontrollably into a bottomless chasm with a stark lack of safety preventatives between their renegade cart and the pit's black maw.

"Holmes," Watson shouted too late. They were already airborne, flying into the abyss.

"Fear not Watson," Holmes said, finding time still mid-fall, in that reassuring cadence of his that was somehow more distressing than anything. "If I'm correct, all that's below us is-"

The carriage crashed, not with the violent crunch Watson had feared, but a mushy splash that reverberated through all his bones and guts.

"…Human waste," Sherlock finished.

The smell that assaulted Watson was potent enough to feel like a personal force with a case of vengeance out for him.

He crawled to the side of the carriage that wasn't sinking into the rancid lake they'd fallen within the middle of. Sherlock creaked the door open and hoisted himself out.

A scarf was already fashioned around the detective's mouth and nose.

Motioning to Watson's own lack of protection to his nostrils, Sherlock said, "Do you not mind the stink, old chum?"

Getting out his handkerchief and fashioning his own breathing mask, Watson shot back, "I didn't expect we'd be finding ourselves at the bottom of an entire lake of sewage tonight. In fact, I never figured myself to _ever_ find myself trapped within a mire of fecal muck, so you could excuse me from being a little less than fully prepared for what I'm coming to now realize is my worst nightmare come true."

"Always expect it, dear Watson," Sherlock lit a cigarette and tucked the tip under his scarf. "They say to catch flies, use honey, but you actually catch more using sh-"

"No _shit_ , Sherlock," Watson rubbed his creasing brow. "You know that's my one rule."

"I've never heard you state that before."

Watson eyed their surroundings for any means possible of escaping the dead center of the river of sewage. "It's one of those rules that transcends the need to be said aloud."

"No such thing," Holmes muttered. He began rummaging through the bag Watson carried at his side. "Ah, here it is. Knew I could count on you, old boy," he said, removing a recently sharpened bone saw the doctor kept handy for last minute autopsies.

"Hang on a moment," Watson scratched at his head. "How'd you come to suspect us landing here, of all damned places?"

Holmes set about busying himself to tearing out the leather cushions from inside the tipped sideways carriage. "That large fire you espied before our cart, moments before we were set upon by that hound, was placed by design. An insidious trap awaited us had we kept our momentum plunging us toward that light. As of now, we'll face our enemy on more equal grounds. He'll be disappointed to see we have refused to act the part of a moth as it is drawn toward the-"

"Enough," Watson said. "With the bug related idioms. Besides, how did you know the firelight was leading us into a trap?"

Holmes was finishing strapping the leather strips around his legs like some sort of protective wrappings. "Honestly, I didn't. I just noted that was the exact place I would have laid a trap of my own. Now, I believe that to be enough lollygagging. The game is afoot. Or, should I say, the _hunter_ is."

Low menacing snarls emanated from all around the septic river.

The river was multiple times wider than a reasonably jumpable distance to either side of where the carriage had plopped into the dead center of slow running human feces.

The scene had become a bit more visible as the river was between two steep hills, rather than the claustrophobic city settings from which the cart had fallen. The full moon's light filtered through the fast-moving clouds otherwise unimpeded, thus glistening off the luminescent fangs of four visible giant hounds on the northern riverbed side the bridge had moments ago been taking them.

The bawdy wails of jubilance and vice issued from all sides, a testament to the prodigious number of iniquitous dens in Whitechapel. Despite being two past the witching hour, the city was awake, though no help could be rationally expected.

"Damn," Watson said. "That's more hounds of the Baskervilles than I would have thought possible." The doctor swallowed. "It's been an honor, old friend."

Holmes rolled his shoulders. "Five perceptible hounds to our north, at least two flanking any possible retreat from our south, and us with two men, one pistol, five shots, and one live, albeit drowning, steed…" The detective leaped off the carriage and _splooshed_ onto the back of the insensate horse, straining to keep its head above filth. "Keep in mind, this is hardly a game dependent on the number of pieces. To extend a metaphor, we need only capture the opponent's king."

A howl peeled out into the night, nearer and louder than the encompassing din native to Whitechapel.

"That," Watson said, realizing as he spoke. "Was not from a hound."

Two shimmering crimson eyes bled over the overhanging bridge. A black hound almost twice the size of any of the others poked a snarling head out to peer down at the two trapped companions. The beasts fangs were white hot as brimstone, the dribbling globs from its jowls fell like sparks into the lake below. Mounted atop it was a cloaked figure back-lit by the bonfire. The slight man tilted back his head and released a second uncouth howl at the moon.

"What embarrassing noise," Holmes commented while using Watson's bone saw to sever his own mount from the entangled straps tethering it to the sinking carriage.

In a breath, Watson aimed and fired his pistol at the cloaked Jack Stapleton*.

Stapleton the breeder's hound hopped safely away from the line of fire as Watson's bullet whizzed harmless past the intended target and into the night sky.

The surrounding hounds all growled. Holmes coerced his now liberated horse toward the North bank, and four expectant carnivorous maws.

"Watson," Holmes yelled over his shoulder. "No more mistakes are allotted us tonight. Four more rounds, and four hounds in which I need you to clear a path for me."

The doctor forced himself to look away at the now gloating and prancing Stapleton, and leveled his pistol past Holmes and at the beasts facing him down.

"Not!," Holmes exclaimed, indicating up at the breeder. "While the rogue is watching."

It took Watson a beat to digest that. "He's controlling them? But how?"

Stapleton cackled. "I see you, doctor. And after my sweet boys here feast on your friend, it shall be me, personally, who sets upon devouring your flesh."

Watson shuddered.

Holmes raised the bone saw above his head as if it were a saber and he was leading a grand military charge. "On my mark, old chum. Take aim, but wait to fire on my signal."

The horseback detective drew mere feet from the now snapping and chomping black hounds. Their clamping jaws flared with fire like a blacksmith's hammer to molten iron.

"I'll savor the taste of your bones as I gnaw out your cartilage, doctor," Stapleton said, his voice cracking from his strained manner of speech.

Watson spared a nano-second glance up at the dog-riding breeder.

The doctor's skeleton half shot out of his body in shock as Watson heard _splooshes_ roiling behind him.

 _The two hounds at our flank,_ he thought. _They'll set upon me any moment!_

Not to let down the ever intrepid detective, and Watson's closest friend, he wiped the sweat from his brow and steeled his nerves. His pistol's aim remained steadfast on the hounds before him, ignoring the predators encroaching from behind.

"I warned you," the drool could be heard in Stapleton's bellows. "You'd rue the day you ever underestimated the Hounds of the Baskervilles!"

Four corona issuing jowls chomped feet away from Holmes's person. His horse reared its head as steam billowed out the wretched creature's nostrils.

"Watson," Holmes said. One severe grey eye shot behind his shoulder at the doctor. "Shoot that imbecile."

With no trace of doubt, Watson devoutly turned his pistol on the sneering Jack Stapleton. He squeezed the trigger.

Stapleton threw his hand to his mouth.

His hound darted like the fiend it was straight out of the bullet's trajectory.

Watson fired again.

Again, to no avail.

Twice more he fired in quick succession.

Stapleton's mounted hound dodged as it flung itself and master to safety with apparent ease.

Watson cursed.

Jack let his arms fall to his sides, looked to the moon, and keened a howl that turned into a triumphant laugh.

Watson collapsed to his knees. Holmes had imparted on him they had no more failures allotted to them that night. And, yet, he'd failed.

He looked to the river bank to see what became of the detective.

It was indeed a gory sight.

The four hounds busied themselves, gnashing and tugging in the large corpse of the horse as it threatened to slide down the riverbank and wholly immerse into the sludge.

 _But what of Holmes?_

Watson had hope. The hounds only had the horse. He looked up the embankment and saw Holmes sprinting up and vaulting his way back onto the bridge.

The bridge on which he then came to face the bloodthirsty hound and its even bloodthirstier breeder.

Watson noted Holmes still gripping the bone saw, now dripping heavily with steaming blood.

 _So that's it,_ Watson realized. _Holmes layered his deceptions. He told me to aim at the four hounds so that he could then signal me to shoot Stapleton instead; all to catch Stapleton off guard. Holmes's plan was to sacrifice the horse to distract the hounds. The horse's blood has riled them into a frenzy, disallowing Stapleton to coerce them back into his control past their baser instincts._

 _But did Holmes's plan still intend for me to hit my target? Surely Holmes can't assume to slay that hound armed with only a now dulled saw._

Stapleton met Sherlock's steady glare.

The detective slowed to a saunter toward the breeder. The saw hung unthreatening at his side. His other hand was under the scarf over his mouth, idling at a cigarette he puffed at.

"You're the fool," Stapleton said, his voice more a screech than ever. "You haven't a prayer at being spared my hound's fangs… or mine, for that matter. You look to taste a bit too lean for my tastes, but no dish is more savory than _justice_."

Sherlock, nonplussed, took an extra long drag at his concealed cigarette.

Stapleton's brow furrowed and raised his hand to his mouth with a menacing flourish.

As if on cue, Holmes flicked his arm with perfected alacrity, throwing the saw straight at his antagonist's face.

That time, Stapleton's hound remained still while the breeder swiveled in his makeshift 'dog-saddle,' attempting to dodge the projectile saw.

The saw found its mark, striking Stapleton in the shoulder.

…with the handle.

Watson's mouth hung open, aghast, that Sherlock had simultaneously hit his enemy, yet had failed to do so effectively enough.

 _Those two lurking hounds me must be just moments from ripping my back to pieces._

Stapleton looked smug* while attempting to hoist himself right-wise upon his mount.

Sherlock's face, or the top visible quadrant, looked even smugger. "You've lost, cur. Time for you to fall on your face and gravel at my feet for mercy."

"Ha," Stapleton barked. "What lunacy has overtaken you, _Holmes_ , to even fantasize I'm not the victor in this-"

The breeder stopped abruptly as he realized, the same moment as Watson, that the two hounds from the south bank were charging at their master's back from his blind spot.

"What? But how-?" Stapleton went white.

The villain rose his fist to his mouth, a move Watson was deducing Holmes had been actively preventing Stapleton from enacting.

Stapleton's hounds beat the man to whatever punch he was attempting.

The large hound he rode on rolled onto its back, while the two others each bit Stapleton's arms.

Stapleton was effectively pinned by his own creations. His other four beasts were wholly placated, tearing into the horse which looked to provide plenty of entertainment and food for hours to come.

Watson looked at the bank behind him, verifying that his two wolfish pursuers from that end were indeed the same two that had flown back around to grapple Stapleton into submission.

—

After the fight had become resolved, it came to the doctor's attention his carriage had more than half submerged into the muck since its initial fall, and also leaned within a comfortable leaping distance to the South Shore.

A minute later, Watson was grasping hands with Holmes as he met him back atop the bridge.

"Just how the devil," Watson beamed as he asked, "did you manage to turn the cur's own creations upon himself?"

Holmes yanked off his makeshift mask, revealing the queerest smoking apparatus Watson had ever espied. A long glass contraption with a pipe bowl on its head and, what could only be several flute-like finger holes down the implement's length. An accouterment blending alchemical tubes with the pipes of a miniaturized musical instrument.

"You excelled brilliantly in executing your part in the plan, old boy," Sherlock's face tried its best to suppress its joy at their victory and fondness for his ally, yet a slight crinkle at his lips corners cracked despite his efforts. "See that small glinting tool he's dropped?"

Watson stared down at Stapleton. His biggest dog was laying happily over of the man's waist, tail thrumming and glowing tongue lulling as it panted. The two other hounds were alert and patient at holding each of his wrists in their clamped fangs. The breeder himself seized with such apoplectic fury. Watson feared for the man's health.

Next to Stapleton's imprisoned hand was a smaller version of Holme's smoking instrument, though, this one missing the smoking components.

"A… whistle?" Watson said.

"Not merely," Sherlock said. "But the latest achievement in design for such a tool. The compact nature and sleek design of this type of whistle produces a sound at such a high frequency no human ear is capable of detecting the noise."

Watson scratched his head. "What? But why-," he snapped his fingers. "A frequency too high for human ears, though perfectly audible for dogs."

Holmes nodded. "Precisely right, old man. The whistle was his means of transmitting commands to the hounds. This smoke cocktail, of course, is to mask myself in the scent of pheromones this mad breeder lathers himself in to give off an air of authority to his commands. I constructed this contraption shortly after we investigated that first crime scene with victims clearly torn to shreds by bigger and improved hounds of the Baskervilles. I'm just glad it came in handy after all the trouble I went to make it."

It took Watson a beat to take in the full extent of the events that had been transpiring around him. "Quite the impressive plan, Holmes." He couldn't help himself from grinning. "…For a man who could have saved himself, and his stalwart companion, a lot of trouble by simply _not_ dropping his loaded pistol before being surrounded by a horde of beasts."

"And waste a perfectly good plan?" Sherlock reflexively puffed at his smoke-whistle.

"Please," Stapleton's voice came out much weaker and raspier than it had earlier. "Holmes. Please."

Watson picked up and pocketed Stapleton's own whistle, for good measure. "Have some dignity. We've caught you nice and fairly, Stapleton. Now it's back to Bedlam with you."

"Please," Stapleton pleaded again. "Holmes, you have to _help me_."

Looking over at Holmes, Watson was surprised to see the detective looking stern, rather than amused by Stapleton's whines.

Stapleton's tears had begun pouring in enough quantity to mingle with streams of mucus also crying from his nose. "Help me, Sherlock Holmes. It wasn't my fault. It was _him._ I can feel him inside my _HEAD!_ "

His insane exclamation stirred Stapleton into his most violent fit yet. Veins jutted from his neck and forehead as he writhed. As he became less coherent, he simply repeated the same phrases and sentiments of, "Get him out!" or, "He's in my head! His talons are sunk deep into my soul, even now! I can feel him twisting my will to his!"

Sherlock's face had gone a shade whiter. "Remind you of anything?"

Watson recalled an earlier case involving similar behavior from victims they had interviewed. Though, this was so far the most drastic and violent case the doctor had witnessed. He considered the possibility Stapleton was faking, but there would be no greater evidence to the authenticity of the madness than Sherlock's reaction.

"He's," Watson attempted adjusting his absent hat. "He's been _mesmerized_."

* * *

*Jack Stapleton: Character from _Hound of the Baskervilles_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The man responsible for creating the titular hound.


	2. Chapter 2: Faux

Rifts of the rising sun's deep orange light struggled past thick gathering clouds and parting fog to illuminate Bedlam Hospital*, Southwark London.

Sherlock Holmes strode through the institutions thick black iron gate. Watson hurried behind after tossing their cab driver a sovereign for his bribed haste and for abiding the pair's stench.

Watson ran through Bedlam's main entrance to hear Holmes sternly ordering to speak to Keeper Arion Steppenwulf*. He caught up with the detective striding resolutely toward the hospital's subterranean wing reserved for the criminally insane.

"You think it must be him again?" Watson huffed. He was still worn down from the night's excursions with battling the Hounds of the Baskervilles. Holmes hardly looked the worse for wear, though his face had strained into becoming far more solemn than usual.

Almost a year earlier the detective had taken on a case for their most unexpected client yet. Sherlock's former antagonist, Irene Adler*, had shown herself into 221 Baker Street.

Miss Adler hired the detective to help a singer friend of hers (curiously named after a hat) who had fallen into the snare of a malicious and dangerous rogue. The fiend had eluded notice from the authorities due to the way in which he enacted his atrocities. Svengali the hypnotist* could mesmerize minds with seemingly supernatural skill.

Svengali's victims were so thoroughly subjugated to his will they were pro-scripted from any actions to free themselves, let alone ask for help from anyone. It was only due to Irene Adler's keen senses she was able to discern the methods and culprit behind her mesmerized friend.

The hospital halls echoed the pandemonium from its inhabitants. As Holmes and Watson reached the basement level, the cacophony drowned out almost completely.

Keeper Steppenwulf appeared and strode beside Sherlock.

"What an honor," the buck-toothed, watery-eyed Keeper said. "This is the first time the famed Detective Sherlock Holmes has deigned set foot _inside_ my hospital walls."

"This is the first time," Sherlock said, without looking at the Keeper. "I've had to haul back a returning guest. We arrived here in all due haste. Another hansom will be arriving shortly containing a criminal you have allowed to escape."

Steppenwulf stopped walking. "Escaped? I don't know anything about an escaped-"

Sherlock held up a finger to hush the man. "I know you don't. Your incompetence precedes you, dear Keeper. Come along now; this way."

Watson knew his companion had been responsible for capturing many dangerous criminals, but it was still a shock for him to notice the number of placards nailed to doors engraved with names he himself had written about helping to capture and bring to justice.

Without looking back at Watson and the keeper, he stopped in front of Stapleton's cell.

"Open it," Holmes said, sounding infinitely impatient.

Steppenwulf slid open the viewing slat and peered in. "He's still in there."

" _Open it_ ," Holmes hissed.

A rattling of keys, clang of the heavy door, and Holmes was charging into one of the most impenetrable cells in the Empire.

"Looks like him," Sherlock said, grabbing the chained inhabitant of the cell by his face. "Watson, what do you make of this?"

The coarse way Sherlock squeezed the man's face and man-handled the head around to show Watson the ears reminded the Doctor of potential meat being examined at a cattle auction.

The detective held his magnifying glass above the cell inhabitant's jawline for Watson to see.

"St. Paul's severed head," Watson cursed. "There are inseams around his face; barely detectable even under the lens."

Sherlock tossed the imposter down into a heap before rushing out of the cell and round its bend.

Watson locked eyes with the shocked Keeper. The man appeared too shocked to move and took several moments before following suit behind Watson, who in turn was rushing after the detective.

"What about him?" Steppenwulf said, indicating the poor stranger with Jack Stapleton's face sewn into his head.

"Stash him somewhere safe," Sherlock said back. "And try not to also lose this fake one."

A minute later they were stepping into Svengali's cell.

The inhabitant was mostly bald, short, squat and pear-shaped, with Svengali's characteristic spindly fingers.

"I can hardly believe it," Watson said putting the magnifying glass to the man's face. "This face also proves not to belong to the body it's attached to. Unless…" Watson snapped his fingers. "We know Stapleton to have escaped, and the soul left in his cell to be a doppleganger, but these scars could be a false clue." He looked expectantly into Sherlock's eyes. "The devil responsible for Stapleton's decoy would only need to add these scars to Svengali's head to make us believe the true one was spirited away. This may yet be the real man himself!"

Watson's hope of making a profound deduction was instantly dashed as Sherlock was already shaking his head. "Afraid not, old man. No time to explain, but further examination of this imposter will only prove he is not the real hypnotist." His eyes went wide. "Jove's salacity! Who else here may have been doppleganged?"

A spark of terror lit a flame beneath Watson. He sprang to his feet. "I know precisely the last man I would ever want escaping here. Arion, give me those keys."

The sweat pooling on his forehead and drenching his sleeve as he wiped was now all from fear, rather than the earlier excursions.

Watson skidded before the dreaded door then waited for the two orderlies to catch up with him before unlocking and entering the cell. The occupant was too dangerous to risk confronting alone.

Inside was a man thrice as chained as any other patient in Bedlam's ward for the criminally insane.

He had always been a slight man, though imprisonment had sucked what little meat from his bones he still had before incarceration. His skin condition was worse than Doctor Watson would have expected it could ever get.

The prisoner's entire skin was a raw red hue. His body ran hotter than most to the point steam poured from his mouth as if his belly contained live coals.

He looked up at Watson with his black, lusterless eyes. They moved slowly as if heavy in his own skull, no doubt a side effect of the inhumanly large quantities of laudanum that was his daily prescription.

"Ah, the writer," said the pitiable chained man with that distinct voice which sounded labored to be speaking past a throat scraped raw by the swallowing of pyroclastic rocks.

Watson struggled to find his own voice. "Jack."

Of course, the killer's real name wasn't 'Jack,' just the _nom de plume_ which he would become world-renowned as*.

"I've been following your accounts of the detective's adventures as much as I am able, doctor," Jack said. Each word he spoke made Watson involuntarily want to clear his own throat, due to how painful the hoarse voice sounded. "But I failed to notice even the faintest notion of Sherlock Holmes's adventure in apprehending me."

Watson took note of how dry his throat was feeling before answering. "Some tales are better left off even the pages of the most grotesque of Penny Dreadfuls."

He shut the door and watched as the orderlies locked and bolted the additional securities.

Sherlock met him half-way down the hall. "Well?" He asked, looking downright dour.

"No doubt in my mind that's the only and original Ripper," Watson said.

Sherlock's face visibly lightened a tone at that. "The first good news of the evening; or, I suppose, the dawn. Now," he rubbed his hands in anticipation for future events, "Out of the worst of the brood here, we have evidence of two emancipated criminals. It sounds as if one is currently being brought back into his rightful abode. So it is up to us to find the other."

Watson followed out of the criminal-ward toward the light. "There is one worst-case-scenario criminal that could be pulling the strings of these events, whom we would not find within any of these cells."

Sherlock chuckled. "I think I can deduce the individual you're afraid of."

"Are you sure, Sherlock," Watson whispered. "Are you dead positive you killed him?"

Sherlock shot one furtive glance of reassurance to Watson. "You need not scare yourself by thinking these events are the machinations of Professor Moriarty. That chapter has already been written and concluded."

Watson smiled, feeling put at ease at his renewed certainty of Moriarty's death. Before remembering his certainty of the once-late Sherlock Holmes's assumed demise."

—-

On their way out of Bedlam, the duo was stopped by an orderly wearing a bowler hat.

"Bugger me," said the orderly in good cheer. "What astounding luck! The preeminent detective Sherlock Holmes!"

The boisterous man jutted out a hand which Holmes left hanging in the air until Watson grabbed it for him.

"It's not in his way to shake hands with admirers," Watson apologized.

The orderly's grin never faltered. "No, no, I wouldn't expect him to deign such an act for one like me. Should've known better, I should have. Say," the man startled Watson by vigorously rolling up his left sleeve. "Could I bother the esteemed detective for his signature upon my skin?"

Watson scoffed.

Holmes looked at the man for the first time since his approach.

"Upon your left arm?" Sherlock asked.

"Rightly so," the orderly said, digging a pen from his right pocket and offering it to the detective.

"I take it you mean to take your arm, and my signature thereupon, to make it permanent in ink?"

The orderly's grin turned sheepish. "Caught me, Mr. Holmes. Just as to be expected though. Just to be expected from your eminence."

"On your non-dominant arm?" Sherlock's eye looked pointed enough to pierce the man.

"Well…" The orderly took a step backward. "You see, as much as I am your biggest admirer, Mr. Holmes, I have recently had God's blessing on my poor life, enough to meet a man whom I equally admire, though must admit may be your better as a detective."

Even in the face of his murderous enemies, Watson had rarely seen such a flare of anger as then flashed through Sherlock's visage.

The detective grabbed the orderly by his right arm, which the man acquiesced.

Sherlock flung open the man's sleeve, to reveal the ventricose black and red scribbles of a recently applied tattoo.

" _Chevalier Dupin_ *," it read.

The orderly again looked sheepish.

Sherlock pressed his face to stoicism, forcing himself not to scowl.

"Sorry, your eminence," said the orderly. "What with Dupin being a what amounts to a knight, I assume him to be… certainly not _less_ than your equal as a consulting detective."

"No need to apologize, my woefully benighted man," Sherlock said. "Firstly, that man is not a consulting detective, only a mere amateur. Second, my own knighthood is merely postponed at the moment, as the Queen has her own personal matters to contend with before the antiquated little ceremony can commence."

"Or," Watson added, "you could say our Queen hasn't the, er, acquired taste for Mr. Holmes."

The orderly's mouth fell agape. "You've met Queen Victoria?" He addressed Holmes. " _And_ you made a bad impression?"

"Auguste Dupin," Sherlock said. "How is it you came across him? He crossed your path recently, as evidenced by your still healing tattoo."

"Well, he's been in and out of Bedlam the last couple of weeks. He's a student of the mind, after all. And he's a hobbyist of an alienist to boot. Though," the orderly lowered his voice," for my salt's worth, he makes a better alienist than any we've got rutting about bothering to get paid for it there. It sounds spooky, but he seems able to read your mind. When I met him he told me all about what I was thinking, as well as things, deeply private things, about myself I have never told a soul about."

Sherlock's back was turned to the two other men. "No," he said to himself. "This can be no coincidence. He must be tied to these escapes and the ensuing cover-ups…"

"Sorry," Watson said. "Who is this Frenchman? A consulting detective and an alienist?"

"He is neither of those things," Sherlock turned to face them again. "Orderly, Dupin's address. Where is he?"

* * *

* _Bedlam Hospital_ : A Mental Asylum in Southwark London. In this universe full of improbably smart geniuses, mystically powerful scientists, and super-sleuths, such an institution would hold much more prominence than the real-life model, by design.

* _Arion Steppenwolf:_ A more-or-less OC.

* _Irene Adler_ : From _A Scandal In Bohemia_ , a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

* _Svengali:_ Main antagonist from the novel _Trilby_ by George du Maurier.

* _Jack the Ripper_ : Since no one knows the true identity of this famous killer, any depiction of him is purely fictitious. He's not from any Sherlock Holmes story, obviously, since such an adventure would be far too gruesome for that medium.

* _Chevalier Auguste Dupin:_ First appeared in the short story _Murders in the Rue Morgue_ , by Edgar Allan Poe. He's Often cited as the first protagonist of any "detective fiction," and thus Sherlock Holmes' predecessor in the genre.


	3. Chapter 3: Penny for Your Thoughts

On their way to the residence, Sherlock explained to Watson who Dupin was as well as his relationship with him.

Dupin was a Parisian man of great rational prowess who had helped solve a handful of crimes with the police. Sherlock had to note how many fewer cases Dupin had partaken in than himself, as well as how much more publicity the amateur had made sure to garner for himself in the French papers.

Sherlock had studied in Paris as a young man, and it was Dupin who had first suggested, albeit jokingly, that Sherlock invent some profession for himself to both flex his own intellectual prowess as well as stem the tide of the, at the time, young man's ever-present, and near-crippling, ennui.

"And why are we seeing your old acquaintance now, before getting back to Baker Street for some sleep first?" Watson asked.

"Not only is Monsieur Dupin one of the very few competent minds currently in London capable of assessing the clues he would no doubt have been exposed to during his visits to Bedlam, but his presence here in conjunction with Stapleton and Svengali's disappearance is highly suspicious."

"You suspect a man who frequently helps the police of, of, of what?" Watson asked. "Of suddenly taking part in crime?"

"I never said I suspected the man of anything," Sherlock steepled his fingers. "I suggested his presence here to be suspicious."

—-

Auguste Dupin's flat was on the top floor of a tall residence with a view of the Thames.

Upon knocking, the door was promptly answered by one of the last things Watson had expected.

"Rheum of God!" Watson couldn't refrain from exclaiming.

The servant motioned for the two men to enter.

Sherlock lit his pipe. "You act, old boy, as if you have never seen an orangutan before."

"I jolly well swear I never have." Watson felt his pulse at his wrist.

"Ishmael," An accented voice called from a different room. "Bring them in here."

They followed the ape into a large study with a lit fire and open window. A mustachioed man of below average size and crisp dress stood from a desk in a deliberate motion.

Smiling wide, he immediately threw his arms wide and moved in as to hug Sherlock.

Sherlock put a hand up to stop the proceeding. "No time for all that, Auguste. We come bearing bad news, I'm afraid."

"It has been how long, Mr. Holmes, my boy?" Dupin asked. "We must have time for me to meet who I take to be Dr. Watson?" He then grasped Watson by the shoulders and pecked him on either cheek. "I am Chevalier Dupin, and an admirer of your stories, Doctor Watson."

"I'm honored. From the sound of it, you could be the hero of several adventures yourself, sir."

Sherlock shot him a stern glance.

Ishmael the orangutan set a kettle on the stove.

"I am happy," Dupin addressed Sherlock, "to see my tutelage has served you well in your career, son."

"Such a funny thing," Sherlock puffed at his briar pipe. "I thought of you as a pupil of mine, of sorts. I recall my contributions proving invaluable to that paper on ratiocination you submitted and."

"A point I will always allot to you, and doubly so as a gentleman since you refused to be named in that paper along with me."

"The limelight," Sherlock looked to the ceiling to blow his smoke at it. "Has never been my prerogative."

The tea steamed and the ape butler began pouring its contents into three cups.

"I imagine the escape of Jack Stapleton is what brought you here today," Dupin said.

"How do you know about that?" Watson said.

Dupin raised an amused eyebrow. "I have been reading the news."

"Ah."

"How is it you, a man of proficient deductive prowess," Sherlock said, "made no note of the dopplegänger filling the absconded breeder's cell in Bedlam?"

"I consider myself a perceptive man, but only of data I have witnessed or am aware of. I never visited the poor Stapleton nor had occasion to peer within his cell."

"And Svengali," Sherlock locked eyes with Dupin. "There would be no point in you denying having not visited the hypnotist, as I would never believe you. Was he not the very specimen that brought you to the Isles in the first place?"

Ishmael set the platter of teacups and accompanying accouterment on the table near the guests.

"Yes, of course," Dupin nodded. "It has been several days since my last visit to the Hospital. I saw the hypnotist while there, and it was definitely the man himself. Tea?"

Sherlock said nothing and instead looked the man up and down for several more seconds. This was the first time in Watson's experience he saw his detective companion need more than a glance to fill himself with whatever clues to be collected from an individual's appearance.

"Your suit is immaculate," Sherlock said. "You also impress me with your overall cleanliness. It was recent that you bathed yourself."

He stared even longer at Dupin, eyes squinting the slightest bit.

"Thank you," Dupin picked up a teacup and took a sip. "In fact, I picked up this suit today from the tailor and pressed it here myself. And not that my bathing habits are any of your concern, but I did clean myself only hours ago. Svengali has flown the coop you say? This is serious indeed."

"Nothing under the nails either…" Sherlock muttered. "Picked clean. Not a scuff or scratch on those shoes." He took a deep inhalation. "Your soap has left you scentless. By my recollection, this obsession with the sterility of yours Auguste is a new trait you must have developed since I saw you last."

Dupin squinted his own eyes and took a long sip from his tea. "I see your penchant for intrusively reading a person is as persistent as ever."

"I gather," Sherlock said, "that you planned on being read by me this morning, and thus scrubbed yourself of telling details. Now, why might you be afraid of what I deduce from seeing you?"

Dupin laughed. He threw his head back in disregard and guffawed in a hearty inviting manner. "I fear nothing, my son. Least of all from you, mine own pupil. It is I who feel the suspected right now. What are you looking at me that way for?"

"Never have I witnessed a man who has so thoroughly covered his own tracks in his appearance. Looking at you is like… staring into a void. Save," Sherlock snapped his fingers. "Save for one thing. That gold chain attached to an equally gold watch in your pocket. The value of this watch is estimated by the quality of that chain as well as the purity of the gold, making it by far the most exorbitant machine I have ever come across. A watch, I'm afraid to say, laying outside the means of one such as yourself Auguste."

Dupin removed the watch in question in a languid motion. "This watch? An old family heirloom."

"I could believe, based on the current trim and flawless presentation of your attire that you would ensure that watch to be as equally taken care of and just as presentable. But there is no imagining the watch's predecessor to be as meticulous in preserving the watch in a state as an untouched and free of blemish as it is now."

Dupin squeezed the watch within a fist. "So you do suspect me; of something."

Sherlock's face drooped into passivity. "Not so much. It was all a mere exercise in deduction. I'm sure you, of all people, will understand my curiosity. Since you know nothing of Svengali's escape and are thus useless in my investigation, we shall be off."

Dupin leaned against his table. "You should know, Sherlock, that I can no longer allow you to leave."

"What?" Asked a shocked Watson.

"No one who suspects me," Dupin's mouth bent into a triangle with the most duplicitous smile Watson had ever seen. "Can be allowed to live. And I know you, Sherlock. I know your mind. You won't let this go until you discover something you shouldn't know. You'll tug on a thread until you've got your hands full of yarn, with no regard to the dismantlement of the sweater."

"What?" Watson repeated.

"I'm as confused as you are, my dear Watson." Sherlock knocked the ashes out of his pipe into an ashtray. "It sounds as if our friend here is delusional about my slight misapprehensions I aimed his direction. Never did I mention the man was _guilty_ of anything in particular…"

Dupin slammed his hand flat against the table. "Don't take me for a fool, you half-daft detective. My mind is twice the combined intellect of all London's inhabitants. I can see inside your brain, I know your thoughts at a glance, as I know all men's. That is why I know it is better to kill you now than give you the chance to bumble around investigating me. Ishmael!"

Sherlock threw the ashtray and its contents at Dupin's face.

A 100-kilogram orangutan bull rushed Watson, knocking him across the room.

Dupin kicked his table up between him and Sherlock as a shield. The tossed ashtray struck the table's broadside. Black dust exploded a smokescreen separating the two detectives.

Forgetting he'd dropped it, Sherlock grabbed for his missing revolver, before unsheathing the wide kukri knife he'd acquired during his pilgrimage in Tibet; the one he'd kept hidden battling Stapleton for use in a possible hail Mary had his initial plans failed.

Dupin tore out the thick leg off the table and swung it around like a policeman's billy club.

"When I read about your demise at Reichenbach Falls in the paper, I was disappointed," Dupin said. "Knowing I would not be happy until I saw in print every grisly detail concerning your mangled corpse."

Dupin swung his club at Sherlock.

Sherlock sidestepped the attack and thrust the knife in to stab Dupin with his superior reach.

Dupin's swing proved mostly bluster, as he caught it mid trajectory and blocked Sherlock's knife with ease.

With a shift of his club, Sherlock's embedded knife fell from his grasp and clattered to the floor.

Dupin held his club out like a fencer's rapier aimed at Sherlock's chest, forcing him back toward the stove.

"And that's precisely," Dupin's shark-like grin could be heard in his speech. "What I'll be reading in tomorrow's post."

As Dupin thrust the brunt end of the club at his opponent's face, Sherlock deftly caught it within his open palm with a flat _thunk_ reverberating into his carpal bones.

In the same instant, he grabbed the porcelain tea kettle with his other hand and hurled it squarely at Dupin's face.

Dupin blocked the kettle with his arm. It shattered, dousing him with its boiling water. Dupin yelped as the contents scalded his arm.

Sherlock tore the club from the other's hand. The burned Dupin held his injured arm while stepping backward until he nearly tripped on the fallen kukri knife.

"You think you can defeat me in a bout of fist-to-cuffs Sherlock?" Dupin smiled even wider inspecting his steaming arm. "Me? The man who taught you everything you know about Bartitsu?"

"You're defeating yourself, old man," Sherlock flipped the table leg around to hold it by the narrow end. "Outing yourself as the rogue you truly are. As suspicious as our reunion was making me, it would have taken time to bring, whatever dark deeds you're guilty of, to light. Now I know what manner of man you truly are, freely confessed by your actions."

"And yet you couldn't sound more disappointed, _detective_ , at me revealing myself of my own volition. I thought it best to skip all that mystery malarky and cut to our _denouement_. I have been patient enough, and now you will see the manner of man I truly am, to your _horror_."

Sherlock rolled his eyes.

Dupin pried his red blistered, melted fingers apart, dangling the gold watch from its chain. With the whir of internal gears then a _click,_ a pendulum shaped blade whirred from the watches base. On its own volition, the device swayed left and right.

"You know what this is?" Dupin's voice grew deeper and more distant as if reaching out of a pit. "A scalpel. One I will use to vivisect your mind."

Sherlock felt a cut across his head. His mind felt soft. He knew, more than anything, he needed to look away from the swaying pendulum. The cut deepened through his head and sliced his optic nerves. His eyeballs floated out of their sockets, retaining their vision, but forcing him to look at nothing except the swaying gold blade.

"What," Sherlock stammered. His tongue had turned to lead. His feet were nailed to the floorboards, his palms nailed to the air. All he could hear was the flutter of wings.

"You are now mesmerized." Dupin's voice bellowed like a blacksmith's hammer smashing into molten steel.

 _I've come this far,_ Sherlock's eyes continued to float slowly away from his head and toward the pendulum. _Catching the Ripper. Defeating Moriarty. Bringing organized crime in London to its knees…_

His vision tunneled. Black swirled in tighter and tighter grip around his eyes, locking them in place so they could only see the pendulum.

 _Leading to this? to fall into such an avoidable trap._ The moment before the hypnosis had begun, he'd seen Watson struggling to escape the grasp of the enraged ape. His service revolver was fallen to the floor, out of his possible reach. _No reliable salvation from John._

 _"_ You have fallen prey," Dupin's voice resounded. "To perfect hypnotism. Svengali's weak brain gave me the final ingredient to this power after I squeezed it like juice from him. His corpse will never be identified, not in the state my interrogation left it blistering in."

The darkness around him, while swirling, also fidgeted and hummed. There was something within the void.

 _What was it they told me in Tibet?_ Thought the detective, who failed to remember his own name. _About tricks of the mind?_

"Your body, mind, and soul are _mine_ ," Boomed the chthonic chorus of voices from all sides. "The latter of which, I'll soon be sending to hell."

Beaks and talons peaked out of the hurricane of darkness. They pierced the detective's skin, dug into his flesh. They grasped him like meat hooks before they all began to tug.

With all his fortitude, his resilience, his grit, the detective strained to stay put, to force himself to realize what was happening was an illusion, to expel the devilish mirage for the farce it was.

He could feel his conscious being ripped out of his brain. His soul truly was departing his body.

 _They said there are powers too strong to be outfought._ He had chuckled, at the time; never had he believed anything less. _I was told, there is no power a man is unable to push past._

The detective shot his glacially projecting eyes like darts at the pendulum. He tore his body apart from his soul and bowled the husk that was left away from his ephemeral self. His corpse flew like a train down its tracks at into the darkness, and straight into the golden pendulum.

There was no darkness. No marks or pricks from the talons and beaks. The commanding voice snuffed out like a candle's fire by a breath.

And Sherlock Holmes charged into close quarter combat with raised fists.

Dupin growled his vehemence and swung his pendulum blade.

Sherlock dodged the chained weapon his full functions had anticipated, and slammed a fist under Dupin's chin, resounding in a crisp crunch.

Fortunately, Dupin reeled backward, again losing his balance.

…Unfortunately, Sherlock's attack had only succeeded because he got the punch off with the hand he'd previously caught the bad side of a table leg with. Half the crunch had been his own bones.

"That's one way to break through my hypnosis," Dupin spat onto his floor. "But that trick has made you far more susceptible to my influence of suggestion. You can never pull that trick off again."

Sherlock jabbed twice in succession, which Dupin easily dodged by backing away.

 _Keep him on his toes. Mustn't let him sway the pendulum even once more._

"Being generous enough to confide in me your guilt," Sherlock found his words panted out more than he would have expected. "Why not continue to confess to me what it is you're guilty _of_."

"I made you," Dupin said, readjusting his fighting posture.

Sherlock wheezed a scoff.

"I gave you the proper push at the proper time, to set you down the path of legally ethical 'justice.'" Dupin held out his burnt arm so the gold pendulum's chain fell straight and taut. "My only reason for doing so, was to form you into the inevitable nemesis for my other creation; a certain genius professor of mathematics I'm sure you are familiar."

Sherlock stepped in and shot another punch lined up at Dupin's neck.

The gold chain arced up, its blade slicing at Sherlock's punch.

By retracting the jab and slamming his foot down onto the kukri blade, the knife flew into the air and caught by Sherlock's awaiting grasp.

"Your sole reason for existence, Sherlock, was for Moriarty to test the mettle on. You're a whetstone for my pet 'Napoleon of Crime" to build up his empire. And soon, his life's work will all be mine."

"Robert James Moriarty*," Sherlock felt his face burn red. "Is dead!"

Dupin chuckled. "Only most of his body, which I fished out from Reichenbach. We're flying in a specialty doctor to fix him up enough for me to mesmerize and scoop out every detail I need from his brain in order to take over his laboriously acquired empire."

Sherlock didn't have any more time to waste. He no doubt needed to wrap things up with Dupin so as to swoop in and rescue his doctor from his one-sided battle with the ape.

"It's not my wont to enact lethal force," Sherlock's knife-free hand felt around for any item nearby he could use as a weapon. His hand alighted on a towel. "Often enough, circumstances do bend our arms into action we don't prefer. This is not one of those times."

Sherlock feinted with a frontal jab with the knife before tossing the towel at Dupin's face.

 _A double bluff!_ Having blocked Dupin's view, Sherlock attacked in the least predictable manner; the same forward strike with the knife.

The pendulum moved so fast it felt like it appeared and slashed in two places at once.

Sherlock's tossed towel was shorn in half, as was the detective's face.

Backing up several paces into the kitchen, Sherlock gingerly pressed his fingers his nose. There was a deep set sticky feeling from the bridge of his nose through his cheek and to his left ear. His nose had a line through it almost as deep as it inset into his face. The outer part of the ear was separated into two halves. That sticky feeling was replaced by an intense stinging that forced hot water into his eyes.

Every slight movement from his left eye brought excruciating pain to his face. Blood was covering that quadrant of his face and trickling down his neck.

Feeling around the counter he found exactly what he needed.

"Ha," crowed Dupin. "Gore is a good look for you. Give me a few seconds. I'll take no time removing the rest of the skin from your head."

Sherlock believed his opponent capable of doing just that. Dupin was too fast with the chain weapon. Usually, outmatched speed in a scrape was barely an obstacle for the detective. The trick was to deduce where the speed was intended to land and turn that foreknowledge into his favor.

The problem was Dupin could match Sherlock's ability to read the other's moves in advance.

Sherlock shook his head, causing him to wince from the wound. Blood was trickling all the way down his chest and gave no signs of slowing down. _Time for another trick learned in Tibet._

The detective cleared his mind, entering it into a meditative state.

Dupin was smart, but was he smart enough to predict a move from his opponent when Sherlock didn't even know what he was going to do next?

He readied his kukri for attack and held out the acquired cutting board like a shield.

Dupin smirked. "Try what you may, pupil. There are no thoughts conceivable in your head that are not known to me."

With an unexpected war cry, Dupin let loose his chain weapon.

Sherlock made to block the pendulum with the cutting board, but the flying blade disappeared before it struck.

The chain whizzed through the air with such disorienting speed, even Sherlock's reflexes lost all perception of the weapon at its tip.

With no real thought of why he did it, Sherlock dropped his knife and the breadboard. The discarded board nicked up against the chain, throwing it slightly off course.

One razor sharp edge of the pendulum embedded into the side of Sherlock's stomach. As it did, he grabbed the chain with both hands.

Dupin's face dropped enough at this for Sherlock to deduce his opponent couldn't pull the weapon free.

Sherlock stepped closer, wrapping his knuckles into the long gold chain. Blood was circling around the rim of his trousers.

Even if Dupin could outfight him, Sherlock had stronger muscles. With a yank, he divested Dupin of his toy.

"What should I do with this?" Sherlock said, the movement careening his face into a furnace of pain. He plucked the pendulum's embedded edge out of his side, causing a whiskey-tasters worth of his blood to gush onto the floor.

Veins protruded all across Dupin's face like a nest of vipers revealing themselves. "Sherlock, you foolish boy. Me killing you would have been a mercy. Once I wretch my pendulum back from your hands I'll have you mesmerized and eating the muck off my boot heels in no time. I will enslave you, torture your soul, and force your body into committing acts of depravity that would make Satan flush."

Sherlock cocked his right eyebrow and began playfully spinning the chain in a circle. "Best get a grip, monsieur. I happen to be losing mine."

With that, he opened his hand, releasing the chain. The pendulum let loose and flew out the window and its glass with a satisfying _plink_.

Dupin's eyes bugged out like a madman. "You absolute _cunt_." And he dove out the window in a rain of glass after his golden trinket.

Sherlock refrained from whistling from what he just witnessed. It was a sheer drop to the street from the window. He ran over to look out.

Dupin was floating gently to the ground. His good arm grasping the golden chain which rose up to the pendulum giving off a vibrant green glow that was preventing Dupin from plummeting straight to his death.

 _Cavorite*._ Sherlock rubbed globs of blood from his face. _That pendulum and chain is the most ridiculously over-developed tool I've ever seen_. For a man who proclaimed to be such an outstanding genius, Dupin had shot himself in the foot by cobbling all his tricks into one device. No wonder he'd jumped through a plane of glass and into possible death by gravity for his gold watch.

Dupin gestured a " _V_ " with his burnt hand and bared his teeth. "We shan't meet again, Sherlock. You're a dead man already. This city is filled with my hired knives, and now I'll be sending them all into plunging your heart."

"You should have made it hard for me," Sherlock said. "Without a case to occupy myself to discovering your true nature, I'm freed up to find you and end you. And you should know I can."

With that, he ran off to find Watson.

In the other room, he found the orangutan covered in soot and adding logs to a blazing fire under the hearth, with Watson blatantly absent.

"Shit," Sherlock pieced the puzzle together.

Seeing him, the orangutan set its log down and charged.

 _Don't have time for this._ Sherlock ran at the ape before sliding like a cricket player under its grasp. His trajectory landed him beside Watson's cane.

With a twist on the cane's knob and a pull, he had the hidden blade out.

As the orangutan turned, ready to attack, it met a sword piercing through its brain.

Sherlock brought the sword down like a rail spike impaling the beast, leaving the hilt sinking into the top of its skull.

"Watson," Sherlock rushed to the fireplace. The smoke filling the room indicated an obstruction in the chimney.

Kicking the flaming firewood out onto the floor, Sherlock went to pull his friend out from where he'd been crammed up the chimney.

* * *

*Professor Robert James Moriarty: No doubt you're familiar with Professor Moriarty, often ascribed as Sherlock Holme's main nemesis. Appeared in _The Adventure of the Final Problem_ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (His first name is not given in the story, and he is often assigned the name "James." Since James was the name of his brother in _the Final Problem_ , I gave him the first name of Robert instead.

*Cavorite: A fictional material from _The First Men in the Moon_ by H.G. Wells. I'll admit that I've never read the story. My iteration of the material is almost completely akin to Alan Moore's.


	4. Chapter 4: Law of the Jungle

He made his way through the jungle leaping from treetop to treetop. The jungle was intimately familiar with him, but he was reaching portions where he had yet to memorize the feel of every knot his foot landed against, every vine best to be swung off of, or every creature by name. Yet he clipped along with all the haste he could muster.

Even the men from the villages dared not approach where he was swinging; the black-rock island within the mucky death swamps.

Odd that his prey had chosen such a harsh, inhospitable section of the already predatory coastal African jungle, but the Head Man proved too complex an enemy to try making sense of anymore.

Tarzan* thudded into a tree dense with cover, arriving on the proverbial doorstep of his quarries home. He could hear human men talking. They were about a click away, meaning they wouldn't have been able to hear his approach, but as he strained his ears, he could make out the words of the two men.

"-And tired of waking up with my ass full of bugs." One of the men was saying.

"I don't even think Kaleb's going to be the last one to drown in one of these goddamn bogs." Said the other man.

"…or these bites I'm getting all over. I'm itchier than my crotch that time I caught the clap."

"This isn't where I want to die."

"None of this would be remotely worth it if it's all only for the money. I just hope the Doctor makes good on his promises."

"You think he might not?"

"A loon like him? Who can guess what he's going to do."

"Well, he'd better- what the hell is that?"

Tarzan embedded his Bowie knife in one of the men the instant he landed on the shoddily constructed wood bridge.

"Oh f-," The other man began, before his throat was caved in by the feral-man's foot.

Tarzan pushed each of his victims into the sand beneath them and spent a second enjoying watching their lifeless corpses sink into the abyss.

His victory was short-lived, as a bullet-stone whizzed by like a horsefly and shot up a shower of splinters at Tarzan's feet.

Looking up he saw two wood towers as tall as trees, each with a man inside pointing their long thunder-sticks at him.

He charged the gated wall constructed of limber before two more fire-stones struck where he'd just leaped from.

He slammed his shoulder against the gate but bounced him off. The impact reverberated to his bone, but he doubted he'd even bruise from the hit. On the other hand, the gate looked worse for the wear.

With one well-placed kick, the gate plowed inward, the hinges popping out.

The two guardsmen were back to at shooting at Tarzan. His aim proved the superior as his thrown Bowie knife stuck into one of the men's shoulders.

After buying himself room to maneuver, Tarzan rushed to the other guard tower. It was tall, of poor construction, made from local sticks and branches. He placed his hide thick palms to a good handhold on the tower and heaved.

There was that feeling of his muscles straining, across his broad shoulders, his chest, down his rope dense back sinews, and rising from his squarely planted legs.

The guard screamed in confusion. Seconds later the tower crumbled to the ground.

Either his senses or his instinct alerted Tarzan that the man stuck with the knife was aiming to shoot his thunder-stick again.

Tarzan leaped to the base of the still standing tower and rushed up it. He climbed up as fast as if he'd sprinted the distance on the ground.

The man's face had gone white, his eyes peeled to their widest.

"Who- who are you?"

Tarzan grabbed the thunder-stick and snapped it in one hand and grabbed the man by his throat. After lifting the man well above his own head, Tarzan shucked out his knife. A cascade of blood poured over his face and ran down his body.

"Where is," Tarzan said slowly, feeling his way around the human speech. "The bad man? Took my friends."

"What?" The guard was flinching from his captor's voice, as its deep guttural qualities usually elicited in men. "The hell you talking about? Put me down. Stop killing us!"

"No."

The man began weeping unabashedly.

Tarzan bit off the man's nose. "You took my friends."

"Please!"

Tarzan separated the man's head from its body.

Jumping down, he found the crippled body of the guard in the collapsed tower. Tarzan drove his fist through the man's chest hard enough his arm sank through and breached the earth.

Shaking the fragments of rib bone off his knuckles, he continued down the path to the inner sanctum of the black rock island housing the Doctor.

—-

As Tarzan drew toward the inner sanctum of the island, the buildings became more and more dense until reaching the largest man-made structure he'd ever seen. So far, everything had been constructed from readily available materials, such as walls of rock and wood and roofs of palm fronds. But the center structure appeared to be a giant seafaring vessel, things Tarzan had seen from time to time and been told one such vehicle was how he'd first been brought to his jungle home.

Curiously, he saw no signs of where the ship would have been dragged from the sea. Not to mention that the harbor was a good three days jaunt, counting by through trees, and other than Tarzan himself, men had always preferred to walk on the ground and cut through the brush, which was drastically slower.

Making his way inside, he noted the vast amount of metal, more than he knew even existed. Thick green grime covered the walls.

No clear path presented itself, making the entire interior of the ship maze-like and frustrating. The parts of the jungle that were new and unexplored to Tarzan were their own kind of maze, but the trees grew and weaved out from the earth toward the sun in organic ways with its own natural philosophy to it. Plus, the jungle always had smells, and beast scratchings, and always the rivers to be followed, so that he could never be completely lost. This man-made ship on the other hand…

Tarzan recognized the musk of a menagerie of beasts and creatures, but with no rhyme or reason as to where the scents originated or what they had meant to communicate. More than anything, the stench of blood and the adrenaline from fear stung the air.

Eventually, he heard the screams.

Screams, splitting into the air like blades.

Every drop and dribble of pain and anguish produced pricked Tarzan's exceptional hearing like a pine needle through his eardrum.

They were insensate wails of some man or beast holding nothing back, all their weakness and suffering laid bare.

The large base was still a maze, but at least Tarzan knew the direction to head toward. He ran through the halls, only passing one guard who squealed in surprise. Before the man could raise his weapon Tarzan was flashing past him, two fingers embedding the man's eye sockets until the tips hit the back of his skull.

Not long after, Tarzan stood before a thick metal door at least three inches thick, the screams just on the other side loud enough to vibrate the iron. A quick slam against it with his shoulder, Tarzan found it locked.

He swung his arm a full rotation, working the soreness out. With a running start, he slammed a kick into the door. His knee suffered some stiffness, but something holding the door in place buckled. He could always work the pain out later by running across treetops.

He heard voices on the other side reacting to his beating on the door. As he continued kicking it, the looser it became, and a minute later the whole mass of metal creaked forward and clanged down before him, shaking the foundation of the base.

There was hardly anything to see within the room he was breaking into as curtains were set up in circles throughout the room. A mustachioed man with a thunder-stick trained on Tarzan walked through a section of curtains, ignoring the material as it passed over and off him. He was dressed like many of the other white poachers Tarzan had faced down and left broken. However, this poacher sported a plethora of hunting knives sheathed all over his person, all with bone hilts. His hat had strings tying together the teeth of a gamut of predatory animals, as well as many that were distinctly human.

The thunder-stick toting man scowled. "So it's you again, the legendary feral-man of the jungle. You've saved me the trouble of hunting you a second time. Not sure if I'm too happy about that."

Tarzan's focus was split when he heard a creature jumping from behind a curtain on his opposite side. A man sailed over the tall rod and landed with no noise. He was much larger than the first man, more heavily muscled, and with vibrant orange hair on his head which was a striking contrast to the white whiskers littering his face where he had neglected to shave for at least a day. Tarzan had never seen another human capable of jumping that high, let alone with the grace and dexterity in the landing.

"What's this," the orange-haired man asked, narrowing yellow eyes. "A _man_ was able to sneak in here? Pah! I really had to see this to believe it."

"Where are they?" Tarzan didn't bother looking at either of the two visible men, instead opting to glare forward at the curtain ahead of him. That was where the screams had originated and where they stopped only after the doors removal. "Where are my friends?"

"Friends?" The teeth hat man asked. "You mean those beasts of the field we've been accumulating? You call those things your friends? Ha, I love this bloke! You have no reason to fret. Your friends are all here."

"Rejoice for them, five-man" yellow eyes said. "They have been called to a higher purpose."

"Where is he?" Tarzan didn't have time for all their words he barely understood, let alone the intent behind them. "The Headman of your tribe. I will have words with him and then I will remove his head."

"I like your negotiating tactics," teeth-hat said. "Bold. But it's up to the Doctor himself whether he allows you your words or not."

Tarzan heard a rustling behind the center curtain, then footsteps. The curtain was drawn.

A humanoid creature the height of a man approached. It was covered with shining green feathers that blood dribbled off of left pools of on the floor where the thing had walked from. Long tentacles roiled from the feathers on either side where a human's arms would be, most of which held small sharp implements soaked in more blood. The face was what an insects face must look like if one were as large as a man, its segmented eyes took up most of the face, shimmering like dull rainbows. At the mouth were two large pulsating blobs.

A human hand reached out of the feathers and touched the face, pulling it off revealing the insectoid features to only be a mask. The feathers were folded up behind the man into a faux-cape. From each arm he tugged off the tentacles, all proving to be attached to two different octopus, each with a wide round hole of a mouth that made them ideal for being rolled up and stationed on human arms. Each was then deposited into a bucket of water.

"You must be strong to have made it this far," The man who had removed the bestial features said. Beneath the feathers he wore patchwork clothes of similar design to upper-class British gentlemen, though all roughshod and tailored out of pelts. His hair was a thick iron grey, as was his short beard which was streaked with shocks of black. His eyes were a lackluster copper. Atop his head he wore bits of a skull affixed to his temples in a way resembling a helmet. Short antlers grew from the bone-helmet and struck into the air making the headpiece unmistakably crown-like.

"But it matters not. You still can be no stronger than what God has allowed." His voice was deeper than stormy waves hitting jagged rock. It sounded as if he were speaking at barely his conversational volume, yet the noise carried the weight of a bellow, easily rattling through Tarzan enough to reverberate past him and echo with strength off the wall behind him.

"What should I do with him Moreau*? When I hunted him out there he was an exquisite challenge," Teeth-hat licked his lips. "Feels like a waste to snuff him out without a fight."

"Just kill him, Zaroff*," yellow-eyes said, sounding bored, examining his long sharp fingernails. "We're leaving today, so you don't have any longer to waste at playing the predator."

"Right-" Zaroff began saying as he readjusted his aim before meaning to shoot.

Tarzan shot off the ground first, practically flying to Zaroff, past the knife mounting the thunder-stick, and shoved his palm square in the poacher's face.

A boney crack followed impact to Zaroff's face as he was catapulted off the ground and thudded several feet away onto his back. A streamer of blood issuing out his nostrils marked the trajectory of his collapse.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tarzan noted yellow-eyes only moving his lips to smile. The Doctor began walking toward Tarzan.

Tarzan could then see that behind the doctor was the form of a naked human woman sleeping with her back on a table with blood running down its sides. He squinted at her, a feeling in his gut like he knew her somehow.

As the woman turned herself away to sleep in the fetal position, she revealed her back. Lithe and muscled, covered in yellow fur and black spots. A long black-tipped tail stretched out behind her before coiling itself again.

He gasped. The pattern of the spots… That he did recognize. She was the reason he had come. She was one of his closest childhood friends, Zavana.

Words failed Tarzan. He stood staring, mouth agape.

"It would appear," Moreau said, "Your journey here was for naught. Whoever she was that you came to rescue is no more. In her place, this angelic creature remade to fit my design."

Tarzan was hardly more than a man-cub when he had met Zavana, a mere kitten herself. She'd been a teacher to him, imparting innumerable lessons on the secrets to patience, speed, conserving energy while hiding in the brush. She had taught him how to hunt, how to survive. He owed almost everything he was to the cheetah. Now the Headman had his claws prying at her vitals, his fangs in her throat.

"Zavana," Tarzan whispered.

An endless boiling like lava frothed within Tarzan. His knuckles and toes cracked as he gripped them taut, drawing them in tight like a snake coiling, preparing to unleash venom from every fragment of its body to destroy the enemy. From every fiber of his being, he bellowed an unearthly howl.

"You will die, Headman," his words sounded more akin to turbulent force screeching from his throat than real human speech. "I will push my fists through your flesh. You will feel the most pain in your life, and then I will hurt you more and rip you apart."

The expression on Doctor Moreau's face remained the same as he approached Tarzan. "You are little more than unrefined primordial slime; haphazardly conjoined genetic materials and amniotic fluids slithered out from between your mother's legs. How do you deign talk of causing me pain? I don't even answer to God, nor do I abide the Laws of Nature."

Tarzan snorted but had no idea what the man's words meant. "I don't care. You will feel my fists."

He flung himself at Moreau with every ounce of ferocity in his being behind his movement. In less time then a heartbeat, he saw the doctor's eyes glimmer with ooze. A crimson sheen rose from below the Doctor's eyelids before fire out like two liquid beams.

Moreau's eye-blood splattered Tarzan in the face.

Tarzan went limp. His body collided into the ground, hitting his hurt shoulder, and skidding him along the floor until sliding into Moreau's awaiting foot.

"My blood is hazardous anywhere other than inside the phylactery of my body," Moreau said to the yellow-eyed man. "It contains high quantities of lethal venom."

Yellow-eyes was staring at the fallen feral-man dripping wet blood over the dry crusts. "I'm more curious about your… choice of conveyance for the venom."

"Ocular autohaemorrhaging. It was a simple surgery I performed on myself, modifying my tear ducts and a few facial muscles. I copied the idea from horned lizards."

"Hmm," Yellow-eyes was losing interest. "What about him?"

"He's dead," Moreau kicked Tarzan's body into the toppled iron door. He turned and began walking back up toward Zavana. "Collect the General and bring him to a table. I'll enhance him while he's too incapacitated to argue his way out of it."

Zaroff was curled up on the ground, clutching the ruins of his face. He groaned as Moreau mentioned enhancing him. Yellow-eyes picked up Zaroff like he weighed less than a bag of straw, threw the man over his shoulder, and followed after Moreau.

"It is time," Doctor Moreau said in his normal voice, his echo as loud as any other man's shout.

Zaroff, slung over the yellow-eyed man's shoulder, peaked up at Tarzan's body.

Tarzan dragged his aching arms closer to his core. Every limb felt like they weighed as much as the door he laid against. It took every ounce of concentration in his body to curl his fingers and place his knuckles into the ground.

Seething madness drove all other thoughts and motivations from his soul as Tarzan fought with all his effort to push down on his knuckles and begin to lift his torso from the ground.

Zaroff's eyes widened when he saw Tarzan still moving.

A blinding light struck everything within Tarzan's sight. Ten-seconds of deafening thunder roared over him, leaving spots in his eyes and ringing in his ears.

Minutes later, once his senses began to recover, Tarzan's eyes roved over the area. His surroundings had drastically changed.

Everything from the iron door onward was gone. The wood floor of the fort was replaced by flattened, scorched earth. The curtains, the people, the ceiling that had been there before the lightning strike, were all gone, utterly disappeared. Looking up, he could see the clear blue sky of the day, with trails of steam lifting from the ground.

Somehow, from somewhere, a bolt of lightning had sucked the bad Headman's inner lair out of the jungle.

Tarzan lost consciousness.

—-

It was well into the night before Tarzan was able to crawl away from the spot the lightning had struck. The rest of the fortress was still mostly standing, only the large circular base in the center that had vanished.

He fumbled his hands up a section of wall to stand on his weak shaking feet. Standing slowly made him vomit, though he'd been excreting ever since he'd been hit by the doctor's blood and the lightning strike, so it was only bile left he was spewing and stinging his throat.

He fell back to the ground.

Daylight hit his eyes. How much time had he lost?

Tarzan stood, and vomited again. His legs had no more strength in them than the last time he'd tried, but his head swam less, and he kept consciousness.

He turned to look behind him, where the lightning had hit, at the circle scorched into the jungle. His shock almost made him topple over and blackout. There was a human figure standing with their back to him in the same doorway he'd first entered to confront the headman.

He shivered. How had he not heard her approach? She must have walked right by him.

She was tall, as tall as he was, in his hunched over sickened stance. Her arms were rolled back in utter confidence, fists held loose at her sides. Lithe heavy muscles were visible wherever her clothes had no wrinkles. Her hair was long and black, hanging down from her head, straight and unconfined. She was so motionless Tarzan doubted she was real.

Then she spoke. "You must be Tarzan. I've heard of you. You felt cold as death when I walked past you. Thought you were dead."

So often when Tarzan heard people talk, there was so much to their cadence and delivery, that even if he knew the words or could figure out the general shape of the sentence, he was left with the impression he had misunderstood more than not.

Something about the directness of the woman's words and the lack of any hidden emotion or unknown agendas behind them made him feel like he wasn't confused at all. It was a wholly unique sensation from hearing a fellow human talk.

"I'm not," he said. "Poisoned, I think."

"You are," the woman said. She still hadn't turned to look at him. She'd barely moved at all. "A lot."

"Not the first time," he said. Wanting to know why she was there, he supplied his reasons, "I came here for the bad Headman. I came for his blood. He took friends of mine from the jungle. Changed them. Bent them."

"Moreau," she said.

Wind blustered from the hole in the world that Moreau had escaped into.

Tarzan reached for his knife. His fingers shook around the hilt. He lacked the power to hold it, but he could possibly maneuver a way to throw it. His aim would be off and he would be slow. If she was like most humans, it was likely it would be enough to kill her. Instinct told him she wasn't like most human's. His gut warned him she was dangerous. "Are you his?"

In an instant, the woman's back swiveled so she could glare him down. Her legs remained still, proving she had incredible flexibility. Every movement she made was with the fluidity of water. Her brown irises were large. Her eyes were cold and laced with inherent danger. A red dot was on her forehead. "No," she said, a poison behind the word that was more than apparent, even to Tarzan.

"You're after him," Tarzan said.

"His head," the woman said. "Not his blood. From the looks of you, you know why that would be a bad thing."

Tarzan rubbed the crackling brown substance from his face and looked at it. It looked like regular blood. His frailty proved it was anything but. "Ya," he said.

They both stood there for several seconds in silence.

"Who are you?" Tarzan asked.

The woman swiveled her back around to look at the lightning struck earth, before her head leaned back on her shoulders to such a degree it brushed against her middle back. Examining the sky, she said, "I am a thing he never should have made. His huntress, his creation, his destroyer. I am ancient and from another country entirely, crossing the ocean in hopes of ensnaring Moreau." Her head went forward to a more natural degree, then turned so one eye looked into Tarzan's. Black hair swept out of her face at the slightest winds. "You can call me Kim."

—-

Tarzan's arm was around Kim's shoulders. She was strong enough that his leaning most of his weight on her didn't seem like a concern. They made their way to the shore.

Kim had told him to follow after her, and after his third collapse, and her complaining about him slowing her down, Tarzan had asked for the help. Based on her response, it looked like Kim had never considered it.

Noticing how his stomach growled, Tarzan suggested that if he was fed perhaps more of his strength would return and he could hold himself up better. Kim dropped him immediately and darted off into the jungle, returning soon after with a small monkey with its neck snapped. Tarzan bit into the mammal with a ferocity that surprised him.

As he licked the bones clean and his hunger abated, his aches and sickness took the forefront of his mind. He couldn't remember a time he'd been so close to passing from the living. He felt worse than when he'd gone white as cave fish from blood loss after fighting the tyrant lion who'd made his way into the jungle and eaten a number of Tarzan's ape brethren.

The sun was setting when they arrived at the beach.

A large sea vessel was docked and swayed on the gentle waves. There was a man standing slack-jawed near the break in trees Kim led them through.

The man wearing a sailor's livery turned upon hearing their approach. "Ma'am, did you find the doctor?"

"Not in time," Kim strode past the sailor with the limping Tarzan, never looking at him. "I assume you prepared this ship for our departure."

The man nodded. "Course set to London."

Tarzan looked back at the sailor. "London?"

"These sailors are from there," Kim said. "They brought the message to Moreau that he was needed elsewhere and that he was to be 'flown out,' and that he would know what that meant."

"A storm carried him into the sky," Tarzan supplied.

"Hmm," Kim said. "It sounds as if this London is a large human settlement. Have you any experience in such places?"

Tarzan shook his head, causing his vision to sway and threaten his stomach into releasing its contents. "Never," he said, then remembered, "But I know of London. I heard I was born there."

Kim called to the sailor who hadn't moved from his initial spot on the beach. He rushed to follow after them, running in jerky unnatural movements.

After boarding the ship, Kim dragged Tarzan below deck. Each sailor they passed wore a similar slackened face and took almost no notice of them, other than offering a quick "ma'am," to Kim. They all moved with similar eerie thoughtlessness, looking as if they were stumbling from task to task as they went about their work on the ship.

She wasn't gentle in dropping Tarzan to the floor. "You will help me hunt him, yes?"

Tarzan refrained from nodding his head and making himself feel sicker. "Yes. But why were you so quick to bring me along?"

With no hesitation, she answered, "You remind me of an old friend. I feel as though I can trust you. You seem to be the best ally I could have found, both more beast than man, and more man than I. You will be helpful to me when we cross into human society."

Tarzan almost laughed. "I hope that's true."

Kim nodded, then turned to leave, saying, "We're shipping out immediately. I'll send men down to help you regain your strength. I may require it in London."

* * *

*Tarzan: The character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

*General Zaroff: From _The Most Dangerous Game_ , by Richard Connell

*Doctor Moreau: The titular mad scientist from _The Island of Doctor Moreau_ , by H.G. Wells.


	5. Chapter 5: Prologue

She watched from the woods as her estate burnt to the ground. The garments she wore had become torn and muddy, and her only remaining possessions.

It had been decades since she'd all but taken for granted her status as a countess and the unique freedom allotted her as a woman allowed to keep possession of her own property.

But now, as her whole life was smoldering to ashes, she remembered the taste of inequality. How long it had taken her, how hard she had toiled to earn her place in the world.

The land, the house, her stables and horses, the meticulously cultivated wardrobe she'd never be able to wear again, even the nearby hamlet and its quaint people she'd come to appreciate, all of it had been hers, not by right, but by sheer hard work.

Women had blamed her of being overly egotistical, though now she knew herself to be proud, and rightfully so.

The red-coated foot soldiers were being called into order by their superiors. Hunting parties were being organized.

She was angry enough to let them find her, to rip into them, to paint the scene as red as their coats. And she was more than capable of causing their destruction… except for how specifically prepared these men were to fight her.

The men were armed with weapons unusually suited for injuring an immortal.

Even if they hadn't been prepared, and even if they were much fewer in number, He was with them.

The man who looked like an angel, who had the unquenchable ambition of a devil.

For all she knew, he was the devil.

Hours ago he'd arrived at her estate for tea and made his offer, of which she had promptly refused. So he'd burned down everything left she cared about in this world.

She needed to earn back what he'd taken from her. But he would always find her, as long as she earned back the prominence belonging to her. Any power she could scrape together for herself in the future, any name she would hew for herself would catch that man's attention.

Her only option was to kill him. As much as she hated to admit it, she couldn't end the man's life on her own. That task required help.


	6. Chapter 6: No Sacrifice Without Blood, 1

Carmilla* awoke with a stiff back and the dry burning pangs in her throat and stomach from several days lack of proper sustenance as the carriage ran over a hefty bump.

She'd been on the lamb for weeks, though she couldn't recall exactly how long as time slurred together, her mind fogging up from severe lack of sleep and general bodily exhaustion.

Her mouth and throat burned with dire thirst, her stomach twisted in knots feeling burst with cysts. A decent helping of blood would slake the general pangs and work to heal her body back to an optimal condition. But she had enjoyed little more than a drop here and there on her escape, supplemented by the occasional woodland creature that, at most, worked only to alleviate her thirst momentarily.

The kindly old man whose carriage she'd hitched a ride with folded his paper down, noticing his passenger had awoken. He offered a warm smile before handing her a treat in wrapping.

"Chocolate?" He asked.

"Thank you," Carmilla let the treat drop in her palm and held herself back from ripping into it like she was a wild animal. She reminded herself to speak in her English accent, now that she had snuck into England.

She sat up, the large scratchy blanket on her falling from her shoulders. She had no need to keep it around her. Even in her weakened state, the cold posed no danger to her. Also, her companion was an old man in a rickety carriage while an early cold front was doing its best to beat the coming winter.

"Here," she said, offering the man the blanket. "I am warm now."

He waved the notion aside as silly, his laugh lines creasing all about his face. "No, no. If I am to die from the cold, let it at least be from my chivalry. It is a rare gift for a man my age to still exert such virtuosity."

She shrugged. There was no way to convince her 'savior' without giving herself away for what she was.

She'd originally found passage upon the carriage by laying as if mugged and passed-out in the road. The man had been quick to take the poor waif with him in minimum need of answers of how she'd gotten there.

The scene had been the easiest to set, as her strenuous journey had left her clothes torn and muddy, her skin bruised and scratched, and the stress of it all elevating her heart-beats to feel like one close to death, the equivalent to her heart racing as opposed to its customary handful of beats per minute.

She rubbed her bagging eyes. "How near are we to London?"

"Oh, only a few kilometers now. We should reach the city before nightfall."

Carmilla didn't hold out much hope for the idea. The nearer they drew to the city, the more concentrated the Lord Xenosia's* forces would be. It wouldn't surprise her if they would be checking every carriage entering London.

Right as she considered when would be best to hop off the carriage and hoof it herself, hollers from outside caused the driver to slow them down.

 _Damn_ , she swore. This was going to get messy.

The old gentleman looked at his companion, reading into her raising the blanket back up to her chin.

"Don't worry," he said. "I am sure it will all be fine."

Carmilla shook her head, but lowered the blanket, realizing how she'd subconsciously used it. "Those men out there, they will kill me. I know them."

The old gentleman had a sad look in his eye. He didn't believe she could know that.

There were dogs barking outside. Carmilla could smell the men, their clothes made from animal hides, the gunpowder, their travel stink, the _garlic_ , even though that herb acting as her weakness was a mere myth. A myth, she suspected, to be one of the many weaknesses Xenosia had purposefully spread with the onslaught of methods to deal with her, so that the Hunters would have trouble distinguishing the misdirects from the facts.

However, the old gentleman did believe in his passenger's fear. "I'll go outside and make sure everything is fine."

Carmilla grabbed his arm, her eyes wide.

He put a finger to his lips. "Don't worry. As far as anyone will know, I am traveling alone."

With that, he stepped outside, careful in his step to block the view of the inside of the carriage from those on the other side before closing the door behind him.

"Hullo," came the now muffled voice of the old gentleman in a congenial manner.

"Sorry for the trouble, sir," came an unfamiliar voice with an English accent, sounding like a young man with authority.

 _One of Xenosia's redcoats,_ she guessed. Part of the brigade monitoring carriage traffic.

Unfortunately, the next voice was loud and wiry, like a roughly plucked string in the wrong key, in an Austrian accent. "Sorry to bother you, sir. I am here on orders from my master, a Lord whose daughter was expected to arrive several days ago in the city. Have you happened across any young ladies traveling by themselves, possibly in dire straits?"

There was a pause before the old gentleman's reply. "No. Heaven's no, only me and my driver on a sad, cold trek. You have me worried now for this poor lady's safety. Who is she a daughter of?"

Carmilla _knew_. The hunter she'd heard had tracked her all the way from Styria. The strange looking man with the golden glasses, Vordenburg*. He would see through the old man's lie. He knew she was in the carriage.

As the conversation went on outside, the man in golden glasses prying more and more, the old gentleman's excuses becoming flimsier, Carmilla crouched poised in the carriage, ready for the inevitable confrontation.

As things stood, she was cornered, the advantage belonging to her enemies. Her next move needed to be fast, a surprise, and it needed to be grand.

Well… grand _ish,_ considering her circumstances and how depleted she was.

Grabbing the hinges to the door she began forcing them to become colder.

Coldening things was part of her greater power, the one she was too weak to tap, and not really that impressive in most circumstances.

As the metal hinges froze over, ice grew out from its segments and made the metal brittle.

Outside she heard Vordenburg losing his patience with the old gentleman. Weapons were shuffling around in the arms of the group of men he'd brought with him.

Carmilla backed as far as she could on the opposite side of the carriage from the door.

Her nature made her physically stronger, the approximate equivalent to a large and burly man. That amount of strength constricted into the slight frame of a short young woman made it so she could throw her weight around with a greater force and speed than either those her size, who were weaker than her or those as strong as her, as they would be hampered by all their extra mass.

One foot planted on the floor, the other scooted up the wall, both pulled taut before she sprang into the door like a bullet.

The hinges shattered on impact and she flew with the bulk of wood and upholstery. As she landed, she kept hold of the door.

The hunting dogs barked into an uproar.

A bullet shot and hit the other side of the door, meaning it was doing its job as a shield.

Glancing over her shoulder, she saw three hirsute men to that side, all with hide leather and fur outfits, Germanic features, and muskets. One of which fired and shot her in the stomach, causing a trickle of thick blood to dribble a glob or two.

A wound to her body was less damaging than to her than a normal human, especially as it was probably impossible for her to bleed out, and her blood bled like molasses. It still hurt her as much as anyone.

Already the bullet wound had stopped bleeding. Her flesh began to mend around the hot ball of lead instead of pushing it out, which is what should have happened if she was working at normal efficiency.

She flashed teeth at the man who shot her and growled with inhuman ferocity.

"Hold your fire," Vordenburg said in a languid tone. "And keep those mutts leashed. We have her surrounded and outgunned."

The hunters facing Carmilla kept their muskets trained on her. The one who had already shot her threw his gun over his shoulder and began loading a crossbow. _That_ would be worse to get hit by than a bullet.

She kept moving, dragging the door with her through the mud at a steady clip, glaring down the hunters.

"Whoa there, little lady," Vordenburg blocked her path, though still stood a good distance away. He was a tall and lanky, his limbs looking too long even for a man his size. He odd sunken in quality about him, in his eyes and skin, as if everything about him was too tight against his skeleton. In his arms, he wielded a sharpened woodcutting axe, a weapon of little consequence to Carmilla.

She kept moving with just as much fervor at a decent clip, dragging the door through the wet mush on the ground where snow had melted. Her gaze fixed upon Vordenburg. She would love to suck the life out of him.

Vordenburg, the man with golden glasses was proving her most ardent pursuer. With how many men Lord Xenosia had employed to catch her on her excursion to London, and how many trappers and fur traders _those_ men had employed, Vordenburg had been the most dogged and effective, consistently finding her and whittling her wits down each confrontation. He also had the truest understanding of her weaknesses.

"Keep those dogs leashed," Vordenburg told his men. "We have her."

With a signal from Vordenburg, an out-of-tune fiddle was plucked with ferocity. Accompanying the sudden burst of music came a talentless singer belting out a Catholic hymn.

Carmilla leered behind her back to the culprit. It was a mountebank* with a hunched back plucking on a sun-faded old instrument. He was covered with dozens of strings of garlic and crudely sawn crucifixes.

The noise of his song felt in her ears like fork tines were scraping against her molars. It would take more than a hymn to weaken or even harm her, but the sound was a painful distraction.

Vordenburg sneered at Carmilla with delight.

 _This would be so much easier if I would kill them all._

The three hunters to her exposed flank had their weapons loaded. Two had crossbows, each with bolts connected to each other by a string of onions.

They shot at Carmilla, the bolts missing her, the sharp points piercing into the wood of the door. The garlic strand flung into her shoulder, digging into her flesh and pinning her against the door.

Carmilla acted stung by the garlic. No reason to make them give up the idea it was an effective weapon against her.

She tore the string off and continued her ascent upon Vordenburg. Several yards past him was a tree line. A little bit farther and she could give them the slip and make a run for it. It would be easy to lose them in the forest.

"Should we just shoot her?" One of the crossbowmen said.

Vordenbug shrugged. He was still refraining from giving the impression he was worried how close Carmilla was getting to him. "Sure, but only in the legs."

Carmilla was prepared for it. The moment Vordenburg had given the all clear, two more bolts from the three hunters flew at her. From her peripheral vision, she predicted the projectiles trajectories and moved her body out of the way.

Two more bolts pierced the door by her legs, making walking beside it a bit more challenging.

Unfortunately for Vordenburg, Carmilla had seen the trap he was setting for her. She could smell the trapper on the broad shielding side of the door. She knew about the net, so when the trapper tossed it over the door she dove away to safety.

The door tilted before thudding into the mud, splattering muck all across Carmilla.

From the ground she arched her back, reaming on all fours. With a burst like she'd used to tackle the carriage door off its hinges, she would pounce into Vordenburg. She would steal a _glug_ of blood from him. No more. Only enough to put some oil in her lamp, maybe weaken him in the knees a bit.

But she wouldn't kill him. Not even _Vordenburg_. She was done killing, and she wasn't about to let a pest like him test her conviction.

After the door had toppled, revealed on that side was the rest of Vordenburg's retinue.

A man in the distance had five leashed dogs growing incessant with their barks. The trapper with the net oddly had no coat or furs clothing him, only a shivering body with a buttoned shirt.

Beside the trapper was a loosed dog wrapped in a fur and a young hunter in two coats and a tricorn hat armed with a riding crop and an ornate crucifix.

 _Ah,_ she thought. _Dressed the boy and the dog in the trapper's clothes, masking their scent in his._

Carmilla swore at Vordenburg as she reared to pounce.

Before she could, she noted another inbound crossbow bolt. With a shift of her legs, it hit the mud at her hip, close enough she could feel the feathers on the shaft brush against her.

The second bolt hit home in the meat of her thigh.

That one she could feel the point scrape against her femur. She lost her balance, landing on her side in the mushy muck, Her plans of pouncing Vordenburg thwarted.

The infernal hunchbacked bard at her back sliced at her ears with his Catholic hymns. Three marksmen had her dead-to-rights with their crossbows, the trapper reeled in his net, the dog-handler was prepared to send his animals on the attack if the need should arise, and the fur wearing dog closed in with is fangs bared with the young huntsman a foot behind.

Carmilla's mouth bloomed into a wide smile.

 _I think,_ she rose a mud-caked arm to meet the hunting dog's bite, _I'm in for a real scrap._

* * *

*Carmilla: The titular character from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella _Carmilla_.

*Lord Xenosia: !

*Vordenberg: The weird looking vampire hunter who shows up in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella _Carmilla_.

*Mountebank: Sort of an old-timey conman; a purveyor of counterfeit holy relics.


	7. Chapter 7: No Sacrifice Without Blood, 2

Carmilla's back sank deeper into the wet mire of earth as a dog bit through her forearm.

Before she could reach the mutt with her free hand, the young huntsman in the tricorn hat struck at her with his riding crop.

On reflex, she caught the crop with her hand. Almost no blood leaked out as the skin and muscle of her palm split open.

She grimaced from the pain of a bolt in her thigh, dog teeth embedded in her arm, and whip tearing her hand apart.

Those inflictions paled in comparison to the all-encompassing, burning alive pain of the huntsman shoving his crucifix into her forehead.

Carmilla screamed. Her body writhed as if it were on fire, ignoring the damage she caused itself by thrashing around her already injured limbs.

The young huntsman stepped with all his force onto Carmilla's non-bitten arm, pinning her from escaping his tortures. He plopped into sitting all his weight on her chest.

She was stronger than the young man, but he still outweighed her and had all the leverage. There was no way for her to buck him off.

Not that there was much thought she was afforded to focus on her escape. Her mind was busy being consumed in a never-ending cycle of torment as the cross on her face steamed her skin off her skull. Being buried with living coals and forced to swallow acid would be a welcome reprieve.

 _How much longer must I need persist_? Carmilla prayed into the void. _Can this be where I finally die?_

The crucifix was raised from her head but was left hovering threateningly close above. It took her several moments to recall her faculties.

"…Enough fun for now." Vordenburg's voice came into Carmilla's consciousness. "We have her now."

"Bitch," the young huntsman on top of her said.

It was hard to tell how long she'd been out, but the young man was no longer using his own foot to hold down her arm, in which she would have lanes available for breaking free. Instead, that arm was tied tight by a rope and held taught by one of the crossbowmen. Testing a pull against it, she felt she'd become too weak to catch him off balance.

Her other arm was stood on by the whole weight of the trapper, no longer in dog's teeth. Her skin only made contact with his heavy boots, her cold power would be no good there.

Another crossbowman was working at binding her feet together with more rope, thought it was obvious he was an amateur compared to whoever had bound her left wrist. If her limbs were dependent upon proper blood flow there was no doubt the tightness would kill that hand.

Vordenburg had approached and looked down at her, an insufferably gloating grin displayed on his thin lips.

Carmilla's eyes glazed over. "Can I help you, sir? I don't believe we've met."

Vordenburg snorted a dry laugh. "Don't get cute with me, hag. You know full well who I am. And I know," he placed a finger onto Carmilla's forehead, digging a yellow fingernail into the raw skin flensed off by the crucifix, "Exactly what you are."

"I never did anything to you," Carmilla could hardly muster the energy to say the words she knew would be falling on dead ears. "You have no reason to be this obsessed with me. Just let me go."

Vordenburg sat back on his haunches and readjusted the golden framed glasses on his face. "To me, personally? No, you never did anything. But that poor girl Bertha, her corpse found drained of all blood in the forest? You did something to _her_."

Carmilla grit her teeth. It was no use explaining herself, but it felt wrong not to, "I'm not the one who attacked her. You've got the wrong monster."

Vordenburg looked to the sky and smirked proudly to himself.

She could just cave his face in.

Glancing around, all the other men were grimacing at her. Whatever joy Vordenburg was getting from the exchange, he was alone.

"After Bertha, there was another girl."

"Stop," Carmilla said.

"The one you bewitched."

She felt her eye twitch.

"You used your dark sorcery to beguile that poor girl under your lascivious influence."

"Dark-…? I can't do that," Carmilla snarled.

"Of course you can. What other explanation is there for how you could manufacture such unnatural urgings within her loins."

"Unnatural?" Carmilla felt the word strike her like a bolt. "What is more natural than a city choked to death by the fumes of a mountain writhing of molten iron, frothing rivers of brimstone and filling the land with smoke that petrifies flesh? What is more natural than a landscape sized boulder hurled down, wreathed in hellfire from the sky, leaving a crater like a mortal wound upon the earth, polluting forth pestilence into the air for the next thousand years? What is more natural and lethal a force in existence than love?"

Silence followed. Vordenburg stared at nothing in particular, his face unreadable.

"Sir," the young huntsman with the crucifix addressed Vordenburg. "I know we're getting paid for capturing it alive…"

Vordenburg shot a glance at the young huntsman.

"We should kill it," the boy said.

"No."

"She's a fiend escaped from the Pit," one of the other hunters added.

Vordenburg stood up and walked away from Carmilla. "Unacceptable," he said. "We bring her to Lord Xenosia. He is not a man you want to cross. This is nonnegotiable."

"Look at it," another hunter said. "God smites it. His relic burns her like piss in snow."

 _He's lost control of them,_ Carmilla realized. Against every fiber of her being begging to let it end, she took stock of her limbs. What could she use to break free?

She closed her fist strung up by the rope. The man on the other end was pulling tight enough it felt like her shoulder was on the verge of being yanked out of the socket.

None of her skin was in close enough contact with anyone else's to freeze them.

There was always another possibility, though one she had never done for more than a second or two, even in her century-spanning life.

Remaining still so as not to draw attention, she began freezing her own arm. The circumference of her tied wrist turned blue, deep violet, then black.

Vordenburg was still arguing with his men, though sounding deflated as if he knew it was hopeless.

"Bring me a stake," the young huntsman said, looking over his shoulder.

Carmilla twisted and yanked her arm in towards her. Her wrist cracked and shattered and her arm tore free.

Only a dull pain accompanied her hand being severed.

The crossbowman on the other side of the rope tipped over onto his back after suddenly losing his balance.

Before the young huntsman could react, Carmilla had slashed the hard and jagged edge of her shorn wrist across the boy's forehead. Gouts of blood poured out, obscuring his vision.

He screamed, dropping the crucifix and clasping his wound.

It was a superficial injury, but it was a spot that would still bleed a decent amount until bandaged.

In one, fluid motion, Carmilla stabbed her handless arm into the man's calf standing with all his weight on her right arm, while bolting up and sinking her thin fangs into the young huntsman's large vein.

She had attacked so quick and ferociously that the rest of the hunters were only beginning to process the sudden commotion. Before they could act, she used her returning strength to break her legs free from the paltry knot meant to bind her ankles.

The young huntsman in her fangs grasp, pushed out against Carmilla. If he had succeeded, her fangs could have sheared through his vein and killed him. She had the strength to resist his shove but decided to suck her fangs back in and let the boy go.

She had gotten about a teacup worth of blood out of him, just enough to return some of her strength and begin healing her most pressing wounds.

She rose and instantly began running.

The hunters all shouted around her, some chasing after her, others rushing to the two men on the ground.

They would make full recoveries, in time. She had caused little more than a slight frostbite in the trapper's leg and superficial wounds to the young huntsman.

 _Maybe they'll let me alone once they see how easy I've been going on them,_ Carmilla tried letting out a chuckle.

Her hitching gait melted away seconds after ripping the crossbow bolt out of her thigh. None of the hunters had their ranged weapons prepared, leaving their only hope being to outrun her. She was stronger than any of them and carrying far less weight.

Some of her aches worked themselves out and she sprinted into the forest easily before any of the men could catch up to her.

—

Carmilla woke up to the dark, moonlight dripping down through near leafless tree branches. Her bed had been a pile of fresh snow when she'd fallen asleep in the afternoon and had at some point become brown water. As she stood she peeled off soaked leaves that had plastered themselves all over her body. There were too many to deal with them all.

Her left hand fumbled uselessly as she made to adjust her shawl. That made sense, she noted, remembering her left hand was left back with those pursuing her, leaving her with a lump of taut skin tipped with four bony lumps, with one off to the side, poking out of the forearm.

Without more human blood, that was the best her hand was going to regrow.

She strained her ears but didn't hear any dogs. She didn't smell anyone nearby. It seemed as though she was still in the clear. It had been a full day of thrashing through the thick forest with no incident, despite Vordenburg and his men knowing she was in there. They hadn't even sent their mutts after her.

After arching her back for a good stretch, she continued sprinting toward London.

It had become difficult to think straight from her exhaustion, but she was realizing the obvious; Vordenburg and crew would be waiting for her on the rim of the forest. They knew where she was, where she was headed and could map out the most reasonable routes her roadless path could lead her out of the woods. And with the hunters taking conventional roads, it would be easy enough for them outpace her while cutting around her.

Down a hand, even less rested, and her last confrontation dealing out more harm to her than the sip of blood healed her, it was tough to imagine her next tussle with the hunters ending any more in her favor than the last time.

Her stride stayed the same, her course just as straight. What did it matter if they caught her? Being brought before Lord Xenosia was the last thing she wanted, but all the hunters had been rearing to mutiny against Vordenburg, so perhaps they would simply kill her if they ensnared her on her mad flight to the city.

She didn't smile at the thought but did lean into her run, finding reserves in her energy that were straining the frays of rope she was at the ends of.

The scent of piss in the wind whiffed into her nostrils, acting as a sort of wake up call.

Carmilla halted and whipped her head around to figure out where she was. The forest? _Oh, right._ She had been running her way to London.

Had she almost passed out on her feet? She hadn't been aware an immortal body could swoon, but she had lost most of the night, unable to remember the bulk of her trip after waking up.

She forced herself to focus on the piss smell. It smelled human, carried by a draft in the direction she was already headed.

In all likelihood, the man pissing in the woods was a member of the hunters pursuing her and was stationed as a perimeter sentry guarding her path.

There were no dogs she could hear or smell and the day was only breaking dusk, still quite dark. Carmilla steeled herself for an encounter but prepared to sneak around the hunter.

She was close. After these past excruciating weeks of playing the fox hounded relentlessly, her end was, proverbially, in sight. Why risk confronting the hunters?

Inching forward with all the reticent stealth she could muster from her taxed body and soul, she paused again. Whoever the pissing hunter before her was, all his attention would be on the tree line in her direction.

She looked up at the withered tree-tops, then down at her hand-severed forearm. The stump had regrown some of the baby skin covering it, but it was weak and sensitive. Rubbing the injured limb against bark was going to wreak havoc to the wound and hurt like hell, but climbing up and leaping over the hunter would be her best bet to avoid detection.

Moments later she had climbed up and over the man and noiselessly landed behind him. The hunter was tall and awkwardly shaped wearing an expensive top-hat that clashed in every conceivable way with the rest of his outfit.

Carmilla smiled.

She reached up and grabbed Vordenburg by the nape of his neck, skin to skin.

Vordenburg startled before slumping down, letting out a massive sigh that was visible in the cold. "Well… damn."

"You move, I freeze your neck and crush it like brittle porcelain."

"I know," Vordenburg said, voice subdued.

Carmilla plucked his top hat off and pushed him away. Donning the hat, she was taken aback at it being a perfect fit on her head. It would serve better than nothing at hiding the vicious crimson scar burned into her forehead in the shape of the Cross.

"This is your final warning," Carmilla splayed her fingers, mimicking claws, held down at her side like a pistol waiting to be drawn. "The next time we cross paths, I kill you. Until then, I am done killing, I am sick of it; sick of running, of hiding, sick of surviving. All I want is to be left alone."

The man in golden glasses moved a shaking hand to grab something off his person.

"Or you could try for your axe, your crossbow, or that pistol that may or may not be blessed with divine might, and then I get to kill you now and save myself the annoyance of checking over my back here and there."

From his vest, he slowly removed a flask.

Carmilla scowled. "Holy water, is it?"

Taking the top off, he threw his head back and swallowed a meaty swig. "Grog. A greasy swill, bitterer than dirt; from my home village."

"Do you believe me?" Carmilla waited for a reply that never came. "Do you believe _him?_ Lord Xenosia? I understand you have a grudge against me, a compulsion to hunt my kind, but do you have any conception of what he really is?"

"I… do," Vordenburg tapped his golden glasses. "I can see things through a different lens than others. I can see alternate truths about the world."

"Alternate truths…" Carmilla scuffed the tip of her shoe into the ground, her body clenching as she dredged up memories better left dead, cremated, and the ashes scattered into the winds of the past. "Entertain this alternate truth: despite me being a monster, there was a person I cared about more than drawing my next breath. Use your imagination, if need be, to understand that I lo-" her voice caught in her throat. "I _loved_ this person. But a romance between mortal and the undying is one borne of hell. Every caress, every brush of hair from a cheek, shared sips of chocolate, holding of hands in the rain… each laugh she blurted with abandon, wild as the wind and sweet as a newborn lamb… They were presages of eternal sadness, portends of doom. The very person who shone with more light and mystique than all the stars on a cloudless night in a moonless sky, the very same harbinger of my worst fears.

"She grew old, she grew weak and feeble minded, and she- the inevitable happened. And I," a pain shot through Carmilla's hand. She had clenched too hard and dug a scar into her palm. "During that time, I went on a quest to confront the man who provided me the choice to save my love. If I had acquiesced those years ago, after flinging myself like a wretch at Xenosia's feet, begging him to bequeath her with immortality at the cost of my freedom, at my oath to never see her again, for the sake of her gaining immortal life… But I refused his pact then. Know there is no alternate truth to this: I will never bow to him again. Never will I be his slave. I am as useless to him as he is powerless to bring her back to me.

"If you hate me, you can serve me no crueler fate than to let me crawl forth in my pitiful existence, burdened with the evil false hope that perhaps only my death can bring us back together."

Vordenburg stashed his flask away. He licked his lips and was silent for moments on end, his only other movement was his eyebrows furrowing. Finally, his head tilted with a nearly imperceptible nod.

Carmilla made no acknowledgment of their terse agreement other than turning and leaving.

No bolt from a crossbow followed her, nor a blare from a trumpet to alert others to her presence.

—-

The tree-line broke letting, nothing but a field between Carmilla and London.

She stepped out of the forest and into the breaking dawn light pooling around her feet and setting the cityscape before her ablaze.

A _twang_ struck out like a dissonant cord behind her, and a crossbow bolt pierced her back and shot blood from her chest. The sharp point was close enough to have nicked her heart.

Carmilla turned back to the forest. The young huntsman from earlier, his tricorn hat shadowing his eyes, a reloaded crossbow hauled up in his arms and aimed at Carmilla.

"At this point," Carmilla wheezed through a punctured lung. "It would be insane to stop me getting to the city. Being this close, you could just admit I fought hard enough for this to count as my win. You could forget you happened upon me as I make my victory dash through this final kilometer?"

The young huntsman lifted his chin, letting light touch his face. His own hat had been hiding the bandage around his forehead where Carmilla had slashed him with her bone earlier. "I missed your heart with my first shot. I will not miss a second time."

"Is this a capture or an execution?"

"You will not be leaving here alive, but I doubt killing a being of pure evil could be considered anything but justice."

Carmilla let out a resigned sigh, echoing the one Vordenburg had let out not an hour earlier when he believed he was moments from being murdered. She measured the distance between herself and the huntsman, deeming it only close enough to breach if she could cause a grand enough distraction. Nothing came to mind, no final cards she could employ to escape. She risked a look away from her soon-to-be killer, peering out over the final expanse to the city.

To make it so far and be killed by some boy she didn't even know the name of and killed for one careless moment of not examining her surroundings. Not the sort of end found in the final chapter of an epic tale. She shrugged. It was as good a time as any, good a place as any… to die.

At last, she would be able to be properly dead. Dead, and at peace.

Carmilla looked the young huntsman in the eye. "Do me the favor of making sure you do hit your mark this time. I would prefer this to be quick."

"Better than you deserve, succubus," the huntsman's scowl deepened. "I want you to know, I don't get paid for slaying you. I set out to capture you, but now, you have proven too vile to let persist in this world."

"What made up your mind?" Carmilla's eyes were squinted close, waiting to die at any moment.

"The old man in the carriage. I don't understand what was wrong with his head, but he was giving you a ride, and he tried to protect you. A gentleman kinder than was smart for him. And for that, you killed him?"

Carmilla peeked an eye open. "Killed-? What are you talking about?"

The huntsman shook his head. "Lying like the devil till the end, are you? You broke his neck with the carriage door. As you flew from the carriage you bashed him to death in one fell swoop."

That couldn't be true. Carmilla was shaking. She hadn't realized. Her eyes stung, but the tear ducts had ceased working centuries ago.

"I- I didn't mean to," Carmilla could only whisper.

"You deserve to die," the huntsman's voice wavered with anger.

"No," she said, again, unable to make herself loud enough to be heard. "I deserve justice."

The sky above London tore open. The most gargantuan strike of lightning Carmilla had ever seen crashed into the city.

The thunder was loud enough to shake the air. The earth shook and made waves like the sea.

Carmilla didn't question the sign from God as she pounced the distracted huntsman.

Before he was anywhere close to gaining his composure, Carmilla had smashed the young huntsman's crossbow and had her fangs planted in his throat.

He gurgled once, attempting his last words as he was drained.

She drained his life completely and let the corpse fall into a puddle.

Full of life, full on fresh blood, her wounds began knitting themselves closed. The crossbow bolt in her chest evacuated. A wretched pain creaked in her handless forearm as if splinters were multiplying from within. The hand regrowing hurt a hundredfold more than when the hand had been snapped off.

She ran toward London as the sunlight ascended from orange to searing white, dawn becoming morning.

"You may be right," her voice came out clear and strong. It had been weeks since she had heard herself sound half that healthy. "About me being evil. You didn't deserve to die like this, but it was you or me." Once she entered the city she would need to find some proper clothing. All that was left on her were bloody rags. Carmilla looked to the brightening sky, "Sorry, Laura. I must be apart from you even longer."


	8. Chapter 8

He slumped back to 221 Baker Street by taking the long way through the winding alleyways and the shadowy thoroughfares of London, best he could. The earthquake shook him as swarms of mortar rained down on his hat and covered him with clouds of old must. Sherlock kept walking without minding the violent shaking of London's very foundations. Based on the past few day's events, an earth-shattering phenomenon of such magnitude was entirely appropriate.

For such a peculiar, horrible past night and day, the largest earthquake to strike London in recorded history felt natural in comparison.

His weight leaned against Watson's cane, and his other hand stayed in his pocket, resting on the doctor's service revolver. The stink of Whitechapel's sewers still hung to him like a curse and he hadn't slept for three straight days. Only the dog whistle contraption was on him, rather than a proper pipe, and smoking the dog pheromones didn't do much for him.

If only he had a syringe of his seven-percent solution. He'd bugger the queen for a quick prick of chemical ambrosia.

 _God bless cocaine._

—-

Sherlock tripped on an ottoman first thing upon arriving home.

"Bleeding soles of Christ," he muttered.

Feeling his way for the fireplace, he blindly worked his way to the familiar feel of his Morocco leather case. Several bibs and bobs were clattered to the floor as he frantically moved his arms over the entire surface failing to find his prize.

"Where in hell are you?"

He moved his cane before him like a blind man, bumbling his way to the study table. The candle was where it always was, but before he brandished his matches, his hand bumped right into the leather case.

Even a small grin proved to sting his cut face. "Time to get chuffed as nuts."

"Don't light that candle!"

Sherlock turned to find the origin of the proclamation shouting from within his personal residence. He squinted his eyes to make her out in the dimness. Her stature was on the short side and to the usual specifications men found was desirable. Her clothes were those of modest means and not perfectly tailored to her body, contrasted to her masculine top hat that was clearly fitted for her head. She leaned against a parasol as if it were a cane. The rest of her features remained masked by shadows.

Sherlock's hand reached into his coat's waist pocket, found the service revolver, and pulled back the hammer, issuing a satisfying _click_. He left it in his pocket, allowing knowledge of the threat to speak for itself.

The woman stayed still without the slightest flinch upon hearing the primed pistol.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm not currently open for business. Please return in a month or four during my working hours."

"It's poisoned," she huffed, sounding exasperated, the hint of an accent on her tongue; something Germanic. "I can only just make out its scent, even less over your peculiar… malodorous musk. I'm no detective, but I suspect someone wants you dead; and that you need to practice better hygiene."

"I had a shitty morning," he said. Now he needed his solution in his veins more than anything. "Based on your assertion of not being a detective, you are welcome to this one free consultation: as you have surmised, there are plenty who want to see me dead. So, either I should not trust you, a complete stranger who has burgled their way into my home as my potential would-be-assassin; or you are a client with a case I have neither the time nor inclination of taking at this juncture and you will only manage to risk your life by inserting yourself within my proximity. Or, worst, you are wasting my time."

The woman began walking toward Sherlock. "If I was your assassin I wouldn't have bothered saving your life just now. As for your other concern, I don't bother myself about danger." She stopped where the moonlight trickled through the sitting room's large porthole window, letting it illuminate her heterochromatic eyes; one blue, the other the color of a cairngorm jewel. "Are you always this bad a detective?"

Sherlock peeked back at his candle. Although it looked exactly the same as the one which had always there, he began intuiting its odd placement of it, the unusual pattern of the usual clutter surrounding the candle. He squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment before prying them back open and peering at the mystery woman.

There was something wrong with the candle, conceivably it was even poisoned. Enough was wrong that he should have noticed it, _would_ have noticed it, if this were any other night. Begrudgingly he had to admit how severe his current need for sleep.

"Austrian," Sherlock said, forcing his brain into gear. "That's where you hail from, obvious by your accent. Your posture and bearing tell me how much you care about appearances; you would never leave home dressed such as you are, in anything less than your finest raiments. Stolen are your current dressings. You only just arrived in London and stopped here first thing after discovering those clothes hung out to dry somewhere. Your plight may indeed be dire if your journey necessitated you wandering through the woods on foot, rather than riding in via carriage as any other lady surely would. You didn't change your shoes, and they carry a layer of mud not found within the city."

The woman clapped once. "I would be impressed that you found me out, but I'm standing right in front of you in your home. I don't see how useful a skill like that might be, unless you can do the reverse. Are you capable, Sherlock Holmes, of following a trail until it leads you to a person?"

"If I'm so unimpressive, then I doubt I can help you. Please leave."

The woman squared her stance, planting herself firmer where she stood. "I traveled far and fought tooth and nail in order to reach here, Sherlock Holmes. I will not leave here without you."

Sherlock rested his rump against the table edge and crossed his arms. "What makes you think I'm going anywhere?"

"Other than the fact that every candle and oil lamp in your abode has been poisoned?" She chuckled to herself. "Maybe so we can slip out of the city unawares before Lord Xenosia's spies report back to him that I met with you and he comes to execute you himself."

Sherlock chewed on that name for a beat. "Lord Xenosia? The President of the Board of Control over the East India Trading Company? What do I have to fear of a man previously ensnared within a web of extortion and blackmail by Professor Moriarty, a villain I've already dispatched of?"

"I don't know who your teacher friend is, but concerning _Lord Xenosia,"_ she punctuated the name. "A man dubbed by your papers as being ' _The Hannibal of Imperialism_.' He's richer than the queen, has a bigger navy, and triple as much political sway in the world. He has a city in India named after him, a standing army in London, let alone the countless battalions stationed in other countries, can apparently call lightning down from the sky, and is likely immortal."

Sherlock halted mid-reach into his inner coat pocket for his pipe he wouldn't find there. Every centimeter of his skin itched. He needed a damn smoke and a dark room to himself. "And he can be found at India House on Leadenhall Street most days of the week, and at the East India club on 16th or the Diogenes club on Pall Mall most other times. There, I found your man and solved the case, all free of charge. Good evening Madam."

As he made his way to move past her, the woman slid in his way and stamped her parasol against the floor. Her teeth bared in a grimace for a brief second before she replaced it with an easy grin. "Sherlock Holmes, my name is Carmilla Karnstein. I come from royalty. There's treasure buried in Styria that I alone know the location of. You help me track down the man I need, and you will be rewarded with enough gold for you to buy a quarter of London."

Sherlock passed her by moving in the opposite direction. "Only a quarter," he muttered. Walking astride her, he eyed the side of her face as well as he could in the moonlight. Her hat made it more difficult to be certain, but it didn't look like her face had a similar surgical scar down it that the fake Svengali had. Maybe he was being paranoid, but he needed to resign himself to check everybody from then on.

"What is it you _do_ want, Sherlock Holmes?" She said to his back.

"Other than for you to stop repeating my full name like that, Carmilla Karnstein?" He patted the leather case in his pocket. "To be bloody left alone long enough to get cock arsed to the tits."

"We don't have _time,"_ Carmilla's voice was beginning to sound strained by increasing stress. "I want nothing more right now than to go wile away my worries at the nearest opium den for a week straight. But the world is teetering over the precipice of hell. Xenosia will keep forcing his thumb down on us all until everything tips into oblivion, and I'm the only one who can even the scale, with your assistance. Maybe you're not concerned, and neither was I, but he won't let us live in the world he recreates to fit his twisted image."

Sherlock stopped walking away. He remembered his years-long crusade against Professor Moriarty; his own plotting, the enemy's counterplots, the mind-bending discoveries into the depths of Moriarty's depravity and jurisdiction over crime, the paranoia making him need to always check for tails as he traveled throughout London, the ever-present stress, all culminating in the final thrill at Reichenbach Falls where he threw himself over the edge with every last dredge of his conviction. Never had he felt so alive.

He could hear it in Carmilla's voice, and he'd spotted it in her eyes. That same fervor he'd had, that burning purpose that had once too fueled him into acting as his best possible self. He envied her, knowing he could never feel that way again. Any man was blessed to have a higher calling in his life, and Sherlock had found his and completed the mission.

It was over for him. It was all over. He would be stowing away on some boat to travel to the New World, find a home so remote Dupin, his knives, or possible new clients would ever be able to find him.

This time, he'd make double sure the retirement would stick.

"Sherlock Holmes is dead," he said. "Has been for a while now. It simply took this long for it to finally sink in. I wish you well on this escapade of yours, miss Karnstein, but there's no one left at Baker Street to take your case."

It started out as a string of giggles that grew into guttural laughs. Soon, Carmilla was uncontrollably bursting forth unladylike guffaws until she wretched over, needing to lean on the table for support. "I'm- I'm sorry," she wheezed as she wiped condensation out of her eye. "You may have the luxury of being dead, but I don't; not yet. My options are pretty damn limited now that I can't enlist your help. I might just have to go try my hand at assassinating Xenosia by myself. Of course, I'll fail; but I'm afraid of what he'll do if he doesn't kill me.

"I'll be off now, if you could kindly point me to the nearest house of iniquity? I could use one last bout of Uranian congress, a final sip from the glistening lips of London's finest sapphic strumpets."

That was when the first brick flew through the window.


	9. Chapter 9

"God's teeth!" Sherlock exclaimed.

"Geh scheissn!" Carmilla shouted.

Glass clattered across the floor.

"Get out 'ere, Sherlock 'Olmes." A booming voice came from outside. "I'd like a word wiv you, is all. Be a lamb an' don't make me send me boys in to fetch ya'."

"Hmm," Carmilla said, regaining her composure. "Here you were worried about me being a subtle assassin, while your real ones are plenty accommodating in exposing themselves."

"I do apologize, miss," Sherlock leaned his back against the wall and tried to peer out the side of his window curtain. "It looks as though your association with me has landed you in a spot of danger."

"Out of the fire, into the pan, I suppose."

"I think the phrase goes the other way around-"

"Olright ya geezer." The loud crass shout interrupted Sherlock. "I know you're not as shy an' wee a fellow as all this, mate."

"Feels like a lifetime ago," Carmilla flexed her left hand in and out of a fist. "That I've been in a scrape where I can let loose and not take everything so seriously."

The second brick was thrown through a second window.

"Those goons will kill us both," Sherlock backed away a safer distance from the window. "If you do exactly as I instruct, we can make it out alive."

"Boys!" The voice echoed. "Git in there an' work this rotter's loaf a' bread about till he starts weeping' blood."

Footsteps could be heard outside the broken windows.

"We're leaving out the back," Sherlock started to exit before realizing Carmilla was standing her ground. "Miss Karnstein."

Carmilla turned to the table, picked up a box of lucifers* using one to light the candle she'd alluded to being poisoned. "Sounds like a good plan. You go ahead and leave. I'm sticking around; curious to see how this all shakes out." She grabbed the candle and walked around the sitting room, lighting every possible source of light. "You'd better hurry. I'll recover from the fumes in no time, but I'm afraid you won't."

A street thug walked through Sherlock's broken window, pushing the curtain aside. Then a similar-looking thug came through the other. They both had truncheons in their hands.

Sherlock gripped his cane, ready to twist the mechanism and wrest out the sword for a fight.

More armed thugs began pouring in from his windows.

He looked over at Carmilla as men began surrounding her, slapping heavy chunks of wood into their palms, taking joy in looming over her slight form. A crooked smile appeared on her face. She set her candle down on a table-stand and raised up her parasol, point first, mimicking a fencers pose.

A gang of the thugs noticed Sherlock as he was backing out of the room, hand indecisively wavering at the throat of his cane.

His eyes began to sting and his nose dribbled a sudden onslaught of snot. The poison, obviously.

A particularly brutish thug with an extra ugly truncheon sneered with a mouth missing most of its teeth as he began encroaching toward Sherlock. Carmilla, seeing the large thug, slid on the floor, away from her own menacers.

Her velocity was great enough that kicking the large thug from her position on the ground made the man topple over. With her same frightening speed, she jumped off the floor and struck her hand to the back of the thug's head, exacerbating his fall and helping his face meet the floor hard enough to splinter the floorboards.

She looked up from her handiwork at the detective. "Run. There's too much poison in here for you. I'll rip these ratbags apart in no time then come find you. With your stink, tracking you down won't be a problem."

As she hurried to say her piece, another thug had run up to her, truncheon raised, prepared to break her head open.

Before Sherlock could warn her, Carmilla spun her parasol in a loop and struck it behind her, the pointy end impaling the thug's stomach. His face went white and his momentum halted. The short woman turned on him and lashed out with a quick at a speed almost too fast to perceive.

The stabbed then kicked thug came off the ground and flew into yet another rushing thug, causing them both to careen to the floor in a heap.

"I have mystical abilities," Carmilla whispered back at Sherlock. "I'll be fine. Run."

Without further thought, Sherlock dashed to the back of the house. Running past the front door, he saw as an axe head splintered through the center. Not that he would have left via the main entrance even if it weren't actively being dismantled by thugs who wanted his head.

He ran to his back window that overlooked the back alley. It was a near perilous drop from his floor to the sunken alleyway below. Over the ledge were three thugs climbing up to the window. They shouted threats at him as Sherlock scurried to out-climb them up onto his roof.

Leaving a damsel behind to get accosted by your own demons coming home to rest? He thought, bitterly, nearly slipping on his awkward tussle of a climb from the small window up poor handholds while carrying a sword cane. Why bother choosing to save your own pathetic life over hers? Not very heroic, Holmes.

She did tell him to leave while filling his house with toxic vapors. Not to mention, she did strike him as extremely capable in a brawl, despite her size.

Once he hauled himself onto his roof, he was met by two awaiting thugs. As they saw him, one sneered as he cracked a riding crop in the air, the other swinging around a blackjack.

Sherlock took out his already cocked gun and revealed it to the ruffians. "Evening, chaps. You mind jumping off that ledge there for me?"

The thugs looked at the gun trained on them, then over 221 Baker's roof at the ground.

"Are you bloody barmy?" The blackjack wielder said. "That fall would shatter our shins."

Sherlock took careful aim and shot the other man in the leg. The goon screamed then fell. His blood leaked out to the extent blackjack had to step away to save his shoes.

"Alright, mate, alright," blackjack said, gingerly approaching the ledge. He set his weapon down and hoisted himself over, hands grabbing the edge to dangle himself off before letting go. A second later, Sherlock heard the muffled crack of bone smacking earth too hard, and the thug's loud curse.

Sherlock ran past the floored thug he'd shot, the bleeding man shooting a wrathful glare.

If he was playing things smarter, Sherlock would have taken the time to interrogate the shot thug, enough to get an idea of who sent him or how big the threat was going to be from whatever gang he was with. But solving problems wasn't Sherlock's goal. He just wanted to get away, to hide somewhere and get his fix.

Five minutes of running across rooftops later, Sherlock clambered down the first building that looked easy enough to descend from. He found his way in a wet alleyway filled with detritus. After leaning against the wall and letting himself fall into a squatting position, he let several more minutes pass to catch his breath.

Sherlock licked his dry lips as he went through the motions of the ritual: rolling up his sleeves, tying off his arm, setting down the leather box and bringing forth its contents with enough reverence as if it were a holy relic from within a reliquary.

"Well, well, well…" A loud obnoxious voice interrupted, the same that had been shouting at Sherlock back at 221 Baker. "I'd say you've made a stuffed bird laugh tonight wif' all your nanty narkin', wouldn't you Mr. 'Olmes? Decent attempt at escape by leapin' across London 'ouses, but I'm still England's best tracker."

Now that Sherlock saw the man, he recognized who it was. He was a tall man with a crazed fleece of hair and heavy mustache, eyes cramped with the red capillaries of a devout drunkard, dressed in exorbitant white clothes of high fashion benighted in rich jewelry, including a ring on his pinky headed with a purple diamond. He carried a short, thick cane and he pulled out his beastly sized revolver.

Sherlock took out his own gun and leveled it at the same time as his assailant. "Reuben Rosenthall," he said. "I must be quite important if they're sending millionaires to rough me up." Sherlock 'tsk'ed. "Or this is a precipitous fall from grace and society for you Reuben. What happened to you, going from shaking hands with Professor Moriarty and working with him as equals, to becoming a leashed bloodhound for Dupin?"

Rosenthall laughed a wet, gargled sound, his throat left half-melted from his perpetual drinking. "You ain't 'alf as smart as they say, 'Olmes. I never heard o' whatever a 'doop-han' is. Besides, you should know what this is about. Whatever it was you did to get in Lord Xenosia's bad graces is what's a bloke's last mistake. So how's 'bout you set down your pistol there before the twos of us wind up chokin' to death on lead slugs we feed each other?"

Sherlock chuckled. "This revolver aimed at your teeth is the only thing preventing you from shooting me."

"Not so, my wee chuckaboo," Rosenthall said. "I don't want you dead; Xenosia does. You think I want to be runnin' around in the middle of the night dirtying my own thousand-pound britches like I'm a common street nuisance? Way I see it, Xenosia wants your head, and I want somethin' Xenosia wants. You see, boy? You're to be my bargaining chip. Besides, time really is not on your side."

As Rosenthall smiled, revealing his brown stained teeth, Sherlock heard footsteps approaching down the alleyway.

Against the hope Sherlock tried not allowing himself, the figure appearing around the corner was not Carmilla. It was an even taller man than Rosenthall. A bald man with a handlebar mustache and the muscular physique of a pugilist showing through his black overcoat that was only slightly less expensive a make than his employer's own white coat. Purvis, Rosenthall's bodyguard.

Purvis pointed his single-shot rifle at Sherlock.

"Toss the pistol," Rosenthall said. "Or I'll shoot off your wee wrigglin' quim-tickler.

Sherlock skidded his gun across the ground as an experiment to see if he would be killed the next moment for doing so. When he realized he was still not being shot, he smiled. "This won't end well for you, Reuben."

"The only thing that worries me about you," Rosenthall replied. "Is how good a price I can fetch you for from Xenosia. Put these on." A pair of iron manacles fell to Sherlock's feet.

As he assessed the situation, he saw how much Rosenthall's revolver wavered in his hand, the aim not even aligned to Sherlock half the time. His eyesight is decaying, Sherlock noticed. The indents on his nose show he needs glasses but is not wearing them tonight. His movements, the hitch in his voice; the brute has been drinking enough that it will no doubt be infecting his reflexes.

With an adequate distraction, Sherlock would be able to close the distance between himself and Rosenthall without getting shot by the man. If Purvis didn't shoot him as during the attack, Sherlock had a good chance at divesting Rosenthall of his revolver, possibly shooting the brute in the process. Upon success on all those motions, if they could be executed with perfect timing and finesse, Sherlock could use Rosenthall's body as a deterrent from Purvis then shooting him, long enough to shoot the bodyguard and disappear into the night.

As he took his time picking up the manacles to shackle himself, he ran the scenario in his head a few dozen times. He did his best to practice each individual movement, as one false move would get him shot. No matter how many times Sherlock thought it through, he felt that getting shot by Purvis was the most likely outcome unless he could exploit a big enough diversion.

Since there were never going to be any good enough distractions for Sherlock to initiate his escape, he shrugged internally and decided to try making a bad distraction, hoping for no good reason his two captors would be daft enough for his foolhardiness to succeed.

"Carmilla!" Sherlock shouted, suddenly bolting up and looking down the alleyway behind Purvis. "Now!"

The two men both glanced to where Sherlock had shouted and saw nothing. During the pitiful distraction, Sherlock charged Rosenthall, grabbing for the man's gun.

As the detective applied the pressure to Rosenthall's wrist to twist the revolver from his grasp, the man's red eyes flared open with fury. With his free hand, Rosenthall punched Sherlock square in the cheek.

The purple diamond on the ring cut into Sherlock's flesh and opened up a gash as it dragged over his already cut and bandaged face.

Sherlock dropped to the ground.

"What the bleeding Christmas is this?" Rosenthall asked. He pulled the depressed syringe Sherlock had left for him out of his arm. "I'm startin' to feel jolly exceptional."

Sherlock put his hand to his new wound. If he kept taking hits like that at the pace he had in the past day, he soon wouldn't have a face left to worry about.

He looked up at Purvis to see if the bodyguard would shoot him. Instead, Purvis was turning his attention to a figure then entering the alleyway.

Carmilla approached the broad pugilist. The edges of her dress smoldered with small bits of smoke trailing off into the night.

"Offal of Christ," Carmilla said. "I see keeping my little detective out of trouble might become a full-time job."

Purvis raised his rifle at the woman. "Walk away now, miss, or I drill your stomach open wif' my elephant gun and we'll see your ladyhood plop out into the mud."

"Not very gentlemanly," Sherlock muttered past his sore mouth.

"Hah," Carmilla's laugh sounded genuine. Something about the pugilist's horrid threat had caused the lady to be happy about something.

Then, in a fluid motion, Carmilla opened her sable parasol frontways pointed forward, obscuring herself behind it. In the same moment, a shocking force of a lightning strike quick cold snap blasted in from where she stood. It was as if a cold front blowing in before a devastating gale lethal enough to kill a man from exposure within minutes flew into existence and filled the alleyway for a single sickening second.

Sherlock had to shut his eyes before they froze, the blood pouring from his wounds hardened and stoppered their streaming.

Purvis's aim was thrown off by the elemental intrusion, his gun firing off tearing through the fringe of Carmilla's parasol.

Her own startled cry from being shot was momentary. She bulled toward Purvis in the same motion she used to open the parasol and summon the freezing phenomenon. She was upon the pugilist not a second after being shot, her parasol snapping closed, her body leaping into the air with a flying kick aimed at Purvis's chest.

Purvis, undaunted by the strange occurrence of a small woman attacking him or the shock of the unexpected rush of blizzard coldness, blocked Carmilla's aerial kick. He only staggered slightly backward from the force of the kick and was already ready to repel Carmilla's follow up attack of a slash from her parasol's sharp pointed end as it collided with his unloaded rifle.

As the two combatants continued their exchange of blows, Sherlock turned his attention back to Rosenthall.

The large man leaned his back against the wall opposite the one Sherlock had himself leaned against. Rosenthall slid down to sitting, his armed are falling to the ground, the grip on his great revolver loosening as if he was tired of holding it.

"Oh God… Dear Christmas, Hallowed Father… Blessed Ghost…" Rosenthall whispered to himself. His hand went to his heart, grasping as if he could reach the organ. His browned teeth grit so hard they looked on the verge of cracking like peanut shells. "God, Mary his Mother… Methinks me hearts goin' bloody cobblers."

"Take deep breaths there, old boy," Sherlock reassured. "You just got well arseholed by a healthy serving of cocaine, is all." He did walk over and relieve the bespoke thug of his revolver, which Rosenthall gave up without protest.

Looking back at the skirmish, he saw as Carmilla scooted around Purvis, the pugilist falling to his knees clutching his face with both hands. Blood bubbled out between the gaps in his fingers, heavy whimpers shaking his entire body.

"That man was a champion prize-fighter," Sherlock commented as Carmilla strolled up to him, twirling her parasol.

"Hmm," she said. "Explains why he didn't expect I'd prick out his eye. The ones who trained to play fight can't beat the habit their opponents will play by the rules."

"Indubitably," Sherlock nodded his head. "Shall we be off? I believe we have quite the workload before us if we are to deal with this Xenosia fellow."

"Oh? So now you really are going to take my case now. I thought the detective had died on the inside and his withered husk was retiring to go drown itself in cocaine solution."

"Not at all, my dear lass. Sherlock Holmes, the world's greatest detective would never leave a damsel in such dire distress; a state in which I have now witnessed you to be mired within."

Carmilla snorted. "These men were sent by Lord Xenosia, but he didn't know I'd be here. They were sent to kill you. Mayhap you divined both our plights as being unexpectedly intermingled?"

"There is no divining in my field of work. Only cold hard logic. Auguste Dupin told me not hours ago he would be sending his daggers after me, and now Xenosia's men are making good on the rogue's promise. No doubt both our enemies know each other. But chivalry has no addendum saying it must be done without ulterior motives. I'm on your case, assuming you can make good on our agreed payment."

"My hero. Yes, I'll reward you one buried Styrian treasure upon your completion of helping me find Lord Xenosia's weakness." Carmilla looked at Rosenthall who was panting on the ground. "Feels pretty cold-blooded to leave the man here to die like this."

Sherlock shrugged. "He's just had a spot of cocaine that's disagreeing with him. If he relaxes he'll be as dandy as a scotch terrier."

"You injected him with the solution from your home? The chemicals that were no doubt supplemented with poisons?"

"Uh…" Sherlock said. Something was wrong with the universe. He'd been behind on too many simple deductions lately. This last one would have been a fatal oversight. He was moments away from injecting himself with the cocaine before Rosenthall had interrupted him. This wasn't the first time he'd gone so many days without sleep. There must be another reason his mind had been acting so… normal. "Of course I knew that. I thought it best not to worry the delicate sensibilities of a lady if you had not already been aware."

Carmilla sighed. "Come here." As Sherlock neared her, she grabbed his head and pulled his cheek down to her lips.

Sherlock was surprised he couldn't feel her breath against his skin.

She licked the cut Rosenthall's pinky ring had left from the earlier clobber. The hot throbbing pain melted away almost immediately.

"My saliva has a numbing agent," Carmilla didn't seem to mind that she'd just ingested some of his blood. "It also disinfected the wound, so it should heal a bit faster."

She knelt beside Rosenthall, putting her hand to his neck, feeling his pulse. Similar to the way she'd drawn Sherlock's cheek to her mouth, she cradled Rosenthall's neck. It was difficult to tell from Sherlock's angle, but it looked like she began sucking at his throat.

As soon as she was finished she stood back up. Only a fading mark was left at Rosenthall's neck, which he began dabbing at with his fingers. "I removed the poison," Carmilla said. "Well, enough of it that he won't die. He's still poisoned. He will probably be sick for a while if not permanently weakened in some way."

Sherlock nodded. "Follow me. I have a safe place in mind kept hidden away for such circumstances as these." He began trotting down the alley the opposite way that lead to Baker Street.

Carmilla adjusted her hat as she fell in beside the detective. "Are you not going to ask?" She quirked an eyebrow up at Sherlock. When he only shrugged, she continued, "About what I am? I would imagine you must be dying of curiosity."

Sherlock took advantage of walking with a cane while his body felt ready to betray him at each step. "I suspect you're a vampire. You're not that big a mystery. Things such as you can't coexist in a world with me wherein I would remain unaware of your kind. I've done my research."


End file.
